


Debris

by kumulonimbus



Category: Mortal Kombat (Video Games), Mortal Kombat - All Media Types
Genre: Civil War, Drama, Drama & Romance, F/M, Family Angst, Kuatan Jungle, Lei Chen Mountains, MK11 - Freeform, Origin Story, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Outworld, Past Relationship(s), Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Drama, Revenge, Romance, Slow Burn, Trauma, War, earthrealm, mkx
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2020-04-24 06:36:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 60
Words: 311,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19167799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kumulonimbus/pseuds/kumulonimbus
Summary: "In a way, I think that original mistake, back then, when I chose not to fight for Amanda, marked the rest of my life and now I'm bound to repeat the same mistake over and over again. That's why I told you that it's not the first time I have let her go: this is a theory I came up with during my days in prison. Maybe there is no Alex, maybe there was never an Amanda. Maybe it's just a mutating "she", you know? A being made for me but that cannot be mine, forced to accompany me through the years even if only in my memories,” he had finally said it – the theoretical mechanism of his heart was now completely exposed. “I've never been the philosophical kind, never been spiritual… but I'm inclined to believe that this is the price I have to pay after that original mistake. Now I'm forced to let her go over and over again, knowing I'll find her again someday, only to let her go once more."Erron Black crosses paths with a woman that will jeopardize his future by awakening his past. As he gravitates helplessly towards his long-lost yesteryears, he shall find himself trapped between this woman seeking his help and the dangerous Rebel-Seekers trying to get to them.





	1. Prologue / Of Dreams and Dreamers

**Debris**

**Prologue**

* * *

_He walked in to find the saloon deserted, abandoned perhaps._

_The place was a mess, with old wooden tables and chairs scattered all over the floor._

_He looked down at his own calloused hands while approaching the bar – they seemed smaller somehow, lighter. He reached for his pistol but it was nowhere to be found and then he noticed it: he had suddenly turned into a younger version of himself, he was fourteen again and most of the dark thoughts and bitter memories that should have been weighing heavily on his head weren't there to haunt him anymore._

_A ray of sunlight interrupted his train of thought as it swirled around and found its way through a crack in a distant wall. The piano started to play and there she was on stage once again, ready to perform. Her blue dress suddenly reminded him just how immaculate, how pristine she looked while on the spotlight – she was a bright, courageous woman and a very talented one also. He grabbed one of the ruined chairs and dragged it closer to the stage; eager to listen. She was a vision, his vision._

_The fourteen-year-old cowboy grinned softly as he observed the way she was walking towards him; her head held up high, ready to sing. Then she stopped walking, rather abruptly, stood in the center of the stage and, with the required dramatism of the artist, placed both her hands at the sides of her waist – the vision was complete now, he recognized it instinctively: the pose, he knew it by heart after watching his mother perform for so many years. That was finally it; she was going to sing for him once more._

_She opened her mouth but no sound came out._

_He frowned, unsure of what was truly happening until he realized she was already singing – only he wasn't hearing her. Something was preventing him from hearing the voice he loved so deeply. He gestured her to stop but she paid no mind and kept on singing her inaudible song – he knew he wasn't deaf; he was perfectly able to listen to every little sound taking place all around him._

_Her voice was the only exception._

_His mother's voice, that breath-taking sound he used to love so much, was the only exception._

_It was a bad dream. It was a curse. To be able to live for so long came with a price: there comes a point when your memory decides it's time to take some things away from you and you don't even notice they're gone until it's too late. Perhaps it was the wild and exaggerated passing of his years, burying his oldest and probably dearest memories and making him colder and colder every day; now far from the warm embrace that had once held him so tenderly. Or perhaps it was the true sentence for every single crime committed all over the years, the one that hurt the most – being able to remember the atrocities from those long-lost days like it was yesterday but having forgotten the one true thing he should have remembered._

_It was a punishment._

_A sad expression set in his eyes as he gave her one last look only to find that she was gone; the woman had vanished in a sepia-colored breeze, never to return again. The light from the stage was already extinguished by now and suddenly it's all debris; just like a fine recollection of carefully chosen memories scattered all over the place, like a black void or a wild whirlpool of faces and images that he can see but cannot touch, and the time - the distance between him and those long lost pieces of a puzzle that seems to be not his anymore ricochets throughout the nighttime for him to remember that perhaps he's already forgotten much more than he should have._

* * *

 Arc I

Chapter I

**Of Dreams and Dreamers**

* * *

He opened his eyes and found himself lying in a bed that wasn't his – both his wrists were tied up to the sides of the bed, his arms fully outstretched. His face mask was nowhere to be found and his naked torso was feeling more than just the morning chill – there were traces of blood all the way down to his stomach and he had a nasty, long and presumably deep laceration all across his abdomen, just a few inches below his navel. There were some bandages that had been applied around his belly so he could only see a fraction of the actual cut. He tried to move but it was nearly impossible, besides being tied up he felt tired and rather numb. He closed his eyes again, foreseeing the headache that was coming his way; then took a deep breath and tried to remember what had happened to him.

"Sorry about the bindings," a soft but masculine voice welcomed him from across the smoky room, "you were tossing and turning in your sleep, delirious I believe. So we had to tie you up to the bed for us to clean your cuts…" the voice continued, endearing and apologetic. "Now, keeping the bandages in place was a whole other mess. Yours is a truly restless spirit, son."

Erron's eyes focused on the old man as he tried to figure things out.

"Missing in action, the official statement from the palace," the old man interrupted Black's thoughts, his voice serious yet kind. "The rebel-seekers found you nearly bleeding to death and they brought you here for us to patch you up. Some of them are even expecting a reward. You better watch your back when you leave – you are money on legs for many people now," the man said. From his looks and the way he spoke, the mercenary deduced that the man was in his mid-sixties or perhaps his early-seventies and of course, he was definitely an Earthrealmer.

_Rebel-seekers?_

_Us?_

"Anyway, it is important that you stay put and that you behave like the good kid I know you are. Finish all your homework in time and we'll go to the beach for the weekend," the old man said tenderly before spacing out, his eyes were wandering somewhere in between the bed and the wall. “ _Old, human, and nuts; winning combination”,_  Black mumbled to himself.

The mercenary stared at the old man for some minutes, witnessing his almost lobotomized expression. He tried saying incoherent things out loud to catch his attention but as soon as he noticed that the man was lost in his own world he started to move his wrists insistently and relentlessly until he felt the bindings coming loose. Once freed from them, Black tried to sit down but the pain he felt across his wounded stomach almost paralyzed him as new traces of blood came quickly to the surface and stained his bandages.

Perhaps the crazy old man was telling the truth but the mercenary couldn't afford to stay there much longer to find out; there was no time to lose – he was needed in the palace, he had a job to do. He needed out.

It took all his strength but he finally managed to stand up and start walking. He found his hat, his face mask and all his belonging sitting on a wooden chair by the only window in the bedroom. All the while the old man just stood there, in the center of the room, completely oblivious of his presence. He could have pointed one of his guns to his head and the old man wouldn't have even blinked. He considered killing him for a minute – he could not be trusted after all or so it seemed: he presented a story that was starting to sound convincing enough but then, all of a sudden, it was nonsense. He walked towards the man and examined him cautiously: he had several marks scattered across the parts of his body that weren't covered by his clothes; the evident signs of a struggle that comes with a permanent residence in Outworld. Black moved near the chair again and slowly started to pick up his belongings one by one. By the sounds coming from the outside, he could tell he was in a populated area, that place wasn't just a hideout lost in the middle of nowhere. Once he was done with his clothing he approached the man once more; he looked him in the eye and whispered an almost inaudible grump, perhaps his version of a thank you.

The mercenary was ready to leave when he heard the old man say:

"You're not ready to go yet but if you have to, I hope you're careful out there." It seemed that, somehow, the man had managed to get a hold of whatever clarity he had left in his mind. "The fact that you can't age does not make you immortal," the man concluded without even moving or blinking.

Black turned around bearing a puzzled look on his face. As if trying to take advantage of the man's little gap of consciousness he rushed back to him and asked: "Do you know if I was alone when… when they… when I was found?" but the man wasn't there anymore, at least not in a way that could prove useful for the mercenary.

Black sighed helplessly as his face began to show a mixture of pain, tiredness, and disappointment, then reached for his pocket and placed a couple of golden coins by the bed. He left the room with nothing but confusion and a few freshly-reopened wounds. The mercenary walked towards an empty corridor that led him to a dining hall where a woman in her thirties was polishing a revolver with the same dedication only he himself would have towards any fire weapon. She seemed to pay no mind as Black walked past her, breathing in his surroundings and examining the place: he was definitely in a typical Outworld house, modest but cozy and significantly smaller than his own place in the palace. He felt tempted to ask the woman a million different questions about that house, the old man, and his very own situation but he just walked on by, pain clearly reflected all over his face, and reached for the door. As he opened it, his suspicions became true: that place was just a typical citadel house and it looked like it was midday or the early hours of the afternoon, maybe. Outworlders were coming and going with their bags and baskets, the marketplace was perfectly visible from the doorway.

He was about to leave when the woman's voice made him turn over his shoulder as he heard her say: "Never mind about Harry, the poor man went nuts a few years back. Now, fifty percent of what he says is true and the other fifty percent is an illusion but the good news is, you get to choose the fifty percent part you want to believe in." A soft chuckle escaped her mouth as she looked up at him: "By the way, I didn't hear a gunshot – thank you for not killing him."

Black leaned on the door and grabbed his stomach as if he could stand no more, blood certainly starting to run down and slip through his fingers.

"Those cuts and wounds of yours – they don't speak Tarkatan if you know what I mean." The woman said, visibly concerned but quite certain at the same time.

"Earthrealmer, aren't you?" Black whispered the question through clenched teeth, the pain he was enduring was now unbearable. She stood up and rushed to his aid, holding him with her right hand on his waist and her left hand on one of his shoulders. She felt the weight of his body resonating all across her back and legs as he closed his eyes and began to fall.

"Aren't we all?" She whispered back.

* * *

He slept for three days; occasionally regaining some consciousness every now and then during brief periods of time until the incomparable sounds of violence woke him from his slumber for good.

The pain he had felt before was mostly gone by now and the minute he removed the bandages from his abdomen he saw brand new skin tissue starting to show at the sides of his larger wound, the laceration exposed across his stomach – he was healing. Unlike his last awakening, he wasn't tied up to the bed so he could move around without much effort. He stood up and walked towards the wooden chair where his belongings were sitting – again. The sounds of sobbing and screaming that had caused him to open his eyes a few moments ago were persistent, even louder than before. He grabbed his pistol and left the room in silence.

The fact that this time there was not a single light in the corridor helped him blend in the thick, dense darkness as he made his way to the dining hall. He was still a bit dizzy but he was definitely feeling much better than the last time he had walked down that same corridor. The dining hall was barely lit but it was enough for him to see the woman in her thirties sobbing uncontrollably, holding her head between her hands as a man was pointing a gun at her. The crazy old man was there too, his expression dumb and absent, with two men flanking him. Black stayed in the hallway and tried to signal the woman to lower her head but she didn't see him. Harry was trembling like a small child, mumbling something to himself over and over again.

"The rebel-seekers, the rebel-seekers, the rebel-seekers…" The words were louder every time and the old man was shaking violently now.

Black watched the scene in silence, still concealed by the shadows of the night until one of the men surrounding Harry slapped the old man in the face, visibly annoyed by his attitude. Blood started to pour from the corner of Harry's mouth yet now his voice was carrying the message even louder and clearer than before: "The rebel-seekers, the rebel-seekers, the rebel-seekers…" The man who was pointing his gun at the woman let out a sigh full of intolerance and, without a word, turned around and shot him in the head: Harry's body collapsed cold to the ground almost instantly and Black could see how the woman, now terrified, was trying her best not to scream. The two men that had previously flanked Harry walked towards the door and leaned their backs against it.

"Are you sure you're not telling lies, woman?" One of them asked, raising an eyebrow, visibly losing his temper.

The woman shook her head in response. She took a deep breath, her hands trembling, and said: "He's not gonna make it, his cuts were too deep, he lost a lot of blood -" she paused, allowing her mind to carefully choose her next words: "Ever since you brought him here he's been unconscious, almost gone. To be honest, we were expecting more from a man who has Shang Tsung's magic running through his body… but I guess in the end, he's just a man," her voice was soft and surprisingly full of remorse.

Instinctively, Black understood that the woman was protecting him, even at the cost of Harry's life.

He still needed out, now more than ever – going back home to the palace was his number one priority but he knew the woman needed his help. He was not a merciful man; there was no doubt about it, but this time the need was mutual: she needed him to help her stay alive and he needed her to answer all the questions piling up inside his head.

_The rebel-seekers?_

_Us?_

"We're taking him anyway," the man that was still by her side grunted, his gun now pressed against her left arm.

"He'll die before you even get to the palace;" she answered quickly and nervously, but both Black and the woman knew his condition was not that critical – in fact, her last words acted like the cue he had been waiting for to finally pull the trigger, "there'll be no reward for you to collect anyway. The Kahn wants his guard back alive, if you show up with his dead body, I don't think he'll be happy."

As soon as she finished that sentence the two men standing by the door were both dead, traces of blood were streaming down their faces. The sound of Black's pistol firing startled both the woman and her remaining captor.

"You were looking for me?" Black asked coldly, almost nonchalantly, as he walked towards the light. He was ready to shoot the third man when the woman grabbed the kitchen knife she had been hiding among her clothes and buried it into her captor's neck, seizing the small window of opportunity Black had surprisingly given her. The man began to choke with his own blood, desperation taking over his features as he struggled in agonizing pain until he kissed his own life goodbye. In just a matter of seconds, he was dead on the floor as well as his partners. The woman looked at Black in the eye, as he approached her disdainfully.

"You look better," she said, trying to regain her composure. She knew she should have said  _thank you_  instead but the blood contaminating the atmosphere was getting the best of her; the inner channel that connected her mouth to her brain seemed temporarily blocked due to the shock of death and the horrifying image of Harry's body lingering still on the floor.

She was all alone now, for the first time ever since coming to Outworld, and all the possible futures she had in store were slowly fading before her own swollen eyes.

"I've been better -" Black replied harshly as he placed his pistol on the table, "but I guess I cannot complain."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! I first started writing this fic back in 2016, during the MKX era - in fact, up until chapter 54 you can find this story over at Fanfiction but for the longest time, I couldn’t decide whether to post it here or not. Now that I’m working on the final chapters, and now that MK11 is out, I decided to pause the drafting of the final chapters and revise the entire story because while many things I wrote back then have found resonance in the lore that MK11 revealed, some other things needed a little adjustment – and what better occasion than a complete revision to post the story here, arc by arc?  
> Takes place during the MKX timeline.  
> Hope you enjoy!


	2. The Dissection of a Moment (An Allegory of Time)

Arc I

Chapter II

**The Dissection of a Moment (An Allegory of Time)**

* * *

  _"For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting."_

Haruki Murakami — South of the Border, West of the Sun

* * *

The time for tribulation was still far from over yet she knew there was no point in getting caught up in the haze of a sadness so dense it would only paralyze her. The woman stood up slowly and walked among the four corpses resting on the ground, her feet moving cautiously as if trying to avoid stepping on the crimson pools of blood taking over the floor. There was a tacit yet quite palpable frontier between the woman and Black, an invisible wall dividing them – her side full of things unsaid and his side, full of questions that still needed all sorts of answers.

"How long have you been here?" The mercenary asked as he turned around slowly to face her.

For a moment, it even seemed natural for him to try and break the ice with a simple interrogation that would also take some things for granted. A lot had been taken for granted, he acknowledged - the fact that she knew he had Shang Tsung's magic running wildly through his system, the fact that they had once belonged in Earthrealm – Black sat down in one of the chairs placed around the large table in the center of the room and inspected the woman in silent contemplation: now that he was taking his time to take a good look at her and that he wasn't about to blackout because of some insufferable pain he could finally see that she looked even younger than what he had thought, maybe she wasn't even in her thirties yet, maybe she was just a twenty-something after all.

Her skin was extremely pale and she had big, blue eyes that provided quite the beautiful vanishing point for a visage framed by long, auburn, almost orange hair.  _Of Irish descent_ , he thought instantly as all those lovely details about her quickly found their counterparts: her skin was pale indeed, but it was also covered by a variety of bruises that exposed all sorts of colors in contrast with the once-immaculate white that provided the background tone. Her eyes were the most incredible shade of blue indeed, but they also had major dark circles around them, suggesting exhaustion and possibly even sleep deprivation. Finally, the hair that should have looked like a bonfire was her prerogative – that was the hair of a woman that hadn't had time for herself in ages.

"For a while…" she whispered as she let her body fall down against the wall, her legs stretching delicately as if trying to let go of all the tension in the room. Silence embraced her for a moment, unsure if she should go on or not. She knew though, the situation she was in wasn't exactly a dilemma: she had to keep talking; she had no choice. Perhaps the only way for her to see the light of a new day was to go clean and hope he wouldn't kill her in return. He was a cold-blooded man, of that she had no doubt, but even that simple question he had asked her only seconds ago had been palpably stained with the unbearable weight of demanding something more from her.

"How is it that you know who I am?" Erron inquired straightforwardly, his hands resting on the table.

"Everyone knows who you are," she said, as a soft but involuntary chuckle escaped her mouth.

Black nodded in silence and scratched his forehead. Raising an eyebrow, he tried and reformulated his previous question – "How is it that you  _know_  about me?" Even though he hadn't said it out loud, it was pretty clear that he was referring to his deal with Shang Tsung.

She didn't answer right away; the woman shrugged her shoulders slightly as if trying to find a different answer from the one she had already given him. She looked down and up again, rather helpless, her mind struggling to choose her words carefully, still frightened by his mere presence.

"It is a known fact…" She began but as soon as those words were freed from her lips she couldn't find a way to go on. Black was fidgeting in the chair, disappointed and impatiently waiting for answers.

"What is?" He demanded, trying to dig deeper, annoyance was starting to get the best of him.

The woman shook her head as she ran one of her hands through her face and started to look around: the sight was not making it any easier for her to open up to him. As soon as he noticed her eyes were drifting absently from one dead body to another, Black realized his interrogation wasn't going to produce any good results until the shock of all the violence and death she had been put through just moments ago was finally behind her.

"You take a moment," he suggested with a sudden kindness that seemed foreign, "you do what you gotta do; take a bath, maybe sleep a while. I'll wait here." He said; the different color in his voice making it clear that it wasn't precisely sympathy what he was offering her, it was more the intricate craft of a professional who knew his game like the back of his hand: she needed time to come back down and talk; he would give it to her. After all, time had never been an issue for him.

"Thought you were about to leave." The woman reflected absentmindedly.

"I'll stay for a while," Black replied, sharply and adamant, his simple words were making it crystal clear that there was a poorly concealed undertone behind that casual sentence. His wasn't a social visit and, in time, he would prove it to her.

The woman stood up and walked towards the hallway: "You know you talk in your sleep, right?" she said almost carelessly, as her silhouette vanished in the darkness of the corridor.

She wasn't entirely sure why she had revealed such a pointless detail to him. Perhaps she was trying to make him feel uncomfortable around her; perhaps she was seeking an innocent shadow of a sense of intimacy she knew they didn't share to see if that new-found closeness would be enough to spare her life. The only thing she was positive of was that those words had propelled from her mouth and now they were hovering, lingering in the air - trying to somehow, get to him.

* * *

As her inadvertent skin started to feel the soft caress of tepid water washing away the turmoil in her system, she placed both her hands against the washroom wall and pressed her chest against her flexed arms: now it wasn't time to think about such cruelty and violence, there was something far more urgent that she needed to consider: her own situation. Surely she would have appreciated some time to properly mourn Harry and to take a hold of everything that she had been through but deep down she knew that, with Black still revolving around her, that was not going to be the case.

She looked down and saw her own naked body covered by a colorful collection of bruises and slashes; they somehow looked like landmarks corrupting what could have been a beautiful landscape. Suddenly the thought of her skin as a white canvas set on her mind like a pulsating metaphor talking about the uncertain path she was about to travel – of course, there were parts of that canvas that she would expose, but there were some other parts that needed to remain hidden; the ultimate question being which parts was she longing to reveal and which parts were she longing to conceal.

There is a thin, barely perceptible line between a lie and a half-truth; she knew this for a fact and embraced the concept nonetheless. All things considered, things hadn't gone so well last time a lie had escaped her lips plus the mercenary still waiting for her in the dining room had lived so many years that she was positive he was one of those individuals that could see right through people - yet she knew there were some things, some particular details about her, that she wasn't going to let him know – she needed him for the one true purpose she had had ever since setting foot in Outworld: going back home. She was certain: the minute the odds turned in his favor she would be irredeemably doomed; best case scenario she would have to stay in Outworld - worst case scenario, Black would end her.

She would only have one chance to make it right, she just needed to play her cards well and hope for the best. Going back to her life in Earthrealm seemed like a distant, bright light she was willing to follow - no matter what.

In an ideal situation, she thought, he would see that she had saved his life and would agree to help her get back home. Only the situation she was in was far from being ideal and the man in front of her was Erron Black.

When she returned to the dining hall the scene had completely changed: the place wasn't precisely "barely" lit anymore, there were several candlesticks illuminating the table and a larger torch had been placed a few meters away from the door. The four corpses that just a few moments ago had been ironically populating the floor weren't there anymore, and neither was Black.

The pools of blood were gone as well, not mopped but visibly taken care of, only a few rebel crimson drops were still showing like a seamless pattern left there, before her eyes, for her to remember not to forget -

about Harry

about the rebel-seekers

about Black

about her own situation.

Finding herself all alone in the house for the very first time was a stinging sensation she wasn't prepared for. She was having a hard time trying to stay focused on what she had planned just a few seconds ago, the minute she had felt finally able to make up her mind – but now the unwelcomed sight of loneliness was harder to take in than the sight of death itself; now it was completely up to her to find her way back home and the constant danger she was immersed in was an invariable remainder of everything that had gone wrong for her ever since crossing the portal.

She thought about her family, her friends and her co-workers back in Earthrealm – were they still searching for her? Was she missed? What was it like for them not having her around? Melancholy was bringing her down and now the house seemed huge, even the thought of Harry invaded her for a moment: sure, he was just a crazy old man but he was the closest thing to a family she had now. He had always taken care of her, in his own way, and she had always helped him the best she could in return. Now he wasn't there anymore – now he had become just another face in the ladder of fallen dear ones.

For a minute she wished Black was still there with her to ask him what was the secret, what was that specific thing she was supposed to do not to forget the loved ones that get trapped in the veil of time. Their voices, their faces – what is one supposed to do to keep them all locked up in memories, even if it's just a panacea, a last resort to get a hold of them?

She poured herself a cup of a light-yellow beverage. She seemed more at ease now; the unsettling look that had earlier set on her face was gradually leaving her. The fact that Erron Black was nowhere to be found was also quite surprising for her and it allowed her mind to speculate: no matter how desperately she needed him to go back home, she had the feeling that perhaps she would be better off without him. True: she had tried many times to get back home and all her efforts had been stained with either disappointment or frustration. True: Black was a resourceful man, close to the emperor, Earthrealmer born and raised whether he liked it or not and those qualifications alone were good enough to make him her most viable option. But there were also some other truths that she needed to consider. True, she was getting tired of living the life of a fugitive, never getting the upper hand. True, he was a mercenary; a man who only cared about himself and the pursuit of his very own personal gain was the only thing that seemed to matter to him but that was something she had known from the get-go – so perhaps counting on him was naïve of her, maybe counting on him was just a foolish idea that would never work out well for her.

"Better now?" The deep, baritone voice startled the woman. Black walked back into the dining hall; shovel in hand, his forearms covered by dust and blood. Just the sight of him towering over her was enough to make her shiver but she tried her best to remain calm. "Took a bath, I see," the infamous cowboy went on as he approached her, carelessly discarding the shovel on the floor. The look on his face had hardened somehow, making his gaze darker, more menacing and intimidating. She handed him the towel that she was still carrying almost mechanically, partially horrified by him but also quite mesmerized by how powerful can one person's mere presence be. He took the towel and rubbed his arms and forearms with it trying to get rid of all the dirt then placed it on the table and took the cup she was holding with her other hand, drinking its contents with just one sip. No  _thank you_  for her - just a deadpan expression letting her know that her time was up.

"Sit down," he commanded, raising his chin slightly to signal her which specific chair he wanted her to use. "I'd rather hear  _you_  talk while you're wide awake." The cruelty encysted in his words was slowly crawling its way back to her and to all her stupid naïveté.

She obeyed rather quickly, not willing to waste another minute. Now that she was seated, and with droplets of water still traveling from her hair to her skirt, the woman tucked some restless auburn locks behind her ear as she observed Black take off his face mask. With one swift movement of his right leg, he sent her chair against the wall, the table now far from her grip. He grabbed another chair for himself and dragged it close to hers until they were sitting face to face, a distance of just a few inches separating them. She felt her body shrinking at this sudden proximity she hadn't been expecting – his demanding eyes showed no signs of understanding. She lowered her eyes and hoped for the best although she knew it would take all of her strength not to fail. The image of Black producing his pistol and reloading it with the ability of a cold-blooded killer was enough for her eyes to stop fooling around: he wasn't toying with her; there wouldn't be any time for hesitation or doubt.

Sitting right in front of him, with her back trapped against the wall and his pistol pointed despotically at her chest, Black had successfully restricted her every move. A juxtaposition of beloved images clouded her senses – but only briefly. She knew she had to be strong. After all, all those beloved images of places and faces had been the fuel that had kept her going for so long – now it was not the time to succumb to sadness.

One of her most recent memories crossed her mind:

_Never mind about Harry, the poor man went nuts a few years back. Now fifty percent of what he says is true and the other fifty percent is an illusion but the good news is, you get to choose the fifty percent part you want to believe in._

She had said those very same words to Black himself just three days ago and, back then, those capricious words had been nothing but a cheap trick trying to play with the mercenary's old and tired mind – but now those words, the ones that should have remained as an innocent line, were now taking another shape, were being seen under a new light.

Noticing the woman's eyes drifting away once again, the mercenary narrowed his eyes and clicked his tongue.

"The rebel-seekers." Black began, impatiently. "Talk."


	3. The Wild Ones

Arc I

Chapter III

**The Wild Ones**

* * *

  _"The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers."_

Angela Carter – The Tiger's Bride

-

_"I want you to be weak. As weak as I am."_

Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being

* * *

"The name's Dakota, in case you wonder." She said disdainfully, her words becoming an unwelcomed echo talking about things he didn't want to hear. The heavier meanings, resonating inside his mind, were trying to act like a countermeasure for his fully uncovered insensitivity. The metallic sensation of his gun pressed firmly against her chest, providing her with some twisted self-confidence, was enough for her to try to approach the situation from a different angle: he was all business, and she was willing to make things a little more personal between them this time. Black eyed her speculatively; she had clearly taken him out of his comfort zone once again just like she had done before, no matter how briefly, when she let him know that he had been talking in his sleep.

The presence of a name changes the equation; it conveys an identity that becomes undeniably attached to a person – a person that suddenly turns into someone that is real, not just another bag of meat and bones for him to collect – she was a full being now, and Black was clearly not comfortable facing that notion.

"What kind of a name is that?" he mumbled, still puzzled, and caught up in an unwanted conundrum. "What sort of a father names their daughter Dakota?" he asked bitterly - even though he had spoken those words out loud he wasn't interested in engaging in dialogue, it was more of an inner discussion he was having with the part of himself that was still clinging to his specific timeline, trapped in his very own private belle époque.

"A modern father." The woman snapped back quickly, her words slashing his antique, old-fashioned sense of morals and acceptable traditions. Though the conversation was lacking real content, it was clear that the gunslinger was far from feeling at ease – it was going to be a long night.

"A modern father…" he echoed her words by whispering them back, his low tone full of disapproval. It was imperative for him to go back to that safe place where he knew his game resided: the digging for information, the impersonality; the longing for that exact moment when a particular face becomes just another face in the anonymous crowd and any traces of the singularity of a given individual are cast away as soon as they reach the surface.

The woman crossed her legs without much effort, besides the little room he had left for her to maneuver. Her lips curled up slightly, as if taking in a small victory, perhaps the only victory she would steal from him.

"The rebel-seekers. Who are they?" Black demanded imperatively, losing his temper.

The woman lowered her head momentarily – no matter how sweet that winning sensation was, she knew it was merely a detail, and a detail would not be good enough to get her home. She would have to be smarter than that; she would have to understand that there was not enough room for their two different methods to win simultaneously. Her efforts to keep it personal were adamantly meritorious, true - but Black's more corrosive, apprehensive strategies were certainly thriving, and they would soon be leading the race.

Plus, he was the one holding the gun.

"They are your regular neighbors. Not  _your_  neighbors, you live in the palace…" she added venomously, her eyes meeting his. "They are the Outworlders that are trying to make ends meet by all means possible. They know stealing fruit or a piece of bread ends with their heads in a basket so they chose to go the other way-" she paused, then raised an eyebrow – the innuendo was going to be irrevocably poisonous: " _your_ way."

She raised her hands and stretched her fingers in the air: "I'm gonna stand up now, cowboy. I need a drink. Easy now." Black removed the gun from her chest without saying a single word and observed her meticulously – she walked towards the table where the bottle was resting and poured the same liquid he had drunk before, the one she had intended to drink herself before he snatched the cup from her hand. The light from the candlesticks was summoning a conniving chiaroscuro, an intricate pattern of light and darkness that made her look as if there was an aura of eternity suspending her in the amber-colored room. She was an eclipsed vision, her side covered in light was exposing her shapes and curves now perfectly visible through her thin clothes; the form of the female body washed in light and shadow and there it was -

Lust.

Lust in his eyes.

The lust of a man who's lived a million lives but still longs for the thrill of simple pleasures.

Her body, now exposed, was reaching out from the shadows, becoming the living metaphor of that canvas full of pieces she was willing to conceal and pieces she was willing to reveal. She should have felt ashamed she knew, that a stranger was trespassing the limits of her privacy yet his gaze tracing the outline of her breasts and spotting her nipples was making her heartbeat take off in what seemed to be a high-speed chase and she asked herself: could that be it? Could become the prey for all his desires turn out to be her ticket home? Would she be strong enough to face that titanic endeavor – playing his prey while being the predator in disguise?

She took a quick look at him from over her shoulder: instinctively, an embarrassed Black tried to look down as fast as he could but there was nothing to be done – nothing could redeem him from his sinful thoughts.

She had noticed - his ominous, curious eyes had been caught by her gaze, a gaze full of pride and instantaneous satisfaction.

A vengeful sense of shame invaded him as he tried to break free from the warmth suffocating his cheeks. Even though he was the one holding the gun, living up to a reputation that had always preceded him, it was unthinkable for him to consider that her mundane shapes could have reduced him to a simpler state that felt so alien it could only be bad news for him. The thought of her sudden, silent victory irritated him with such fury he felt his own blood rushing through his fingers, bumping against the frontier of his fingertips – his hands were sweaty now, yet his gun was the only anchor he needed to stay afloat.

He couldn't afford to sink. Not now.

He eyed the woman once more; confirming that her eyes were now sealed chambers that had demoted him to the most primitive of states, to a less significant version of himself -

A simple man corrupted by desire, restricted by his own temptation.

_Cowboy up, Black._

* * *

_Seven forty-five, evening – that was the time. Even though he was barely twelve ("Almost thirteen" he would declare) he had already found his very first ritual in this life: standing on his tiptoes at seven forty-five, Thursdays through Sundays, his height stretching to unimaginable lengths using an old wooden box to reach for glory itself – watching the saloon girls undress and change into their working clothes._

_Indulgence was a sweet treasure he would devour only to rejoice later in the magical, forbidden sights that would accompany him throughout the nights: his mother would be busy enough in a separate room, preparing herself for the night shows so she would not notice his naughty adventures – no matter if ginger, blonde or brunette, they all had become a crucial part of his development as a proper young man, a man whose tender age could not make him refrain from getting dangerously closer to the world of adulthood._

_Until she noticed._

_One of them, one of the saloon girls caught his eyes spying on them at the other side of the window pane–_

_What was her name?_

_The same rush that was invading him now had invaded him back then, that exact day when the twenty-something girl caught him in his illicit adventure. The same feeling of trepidation had stumbled upon him back then, his cheeks turning red as shame startled him. She grinned softly at him, standing where she was, conspiratorially knowing, finding his curiosity amusing or perhaps even challenging. He ran off quickly, willing to push those nasty thoughts behind him and walked into the saloon, acting as if nothing had happened. He placed himself behind the bar just like every other night, waiting for his mother to sing. All the girls came and went a thousand times, the buzz in his ears was making him dizzy and considerably weaker in the knees._

_What was her name?_

_He had been so caught up in his own little world that by the time his mother went on stage he wasn't even paying attention, all he knew was that the same girl had eyed him all night, starting a fever deep within him that could only be quenched by a closeness still elusive to his senses._

_By the time his mother's performance was over, the girls had already abandoned the place and the bartender was busy outside trying to get his customers walking, most of them too drunk to ride their horses back home. Erron stood up; finding himself all alone in the saloon, and started to walk towards the room he used to share with his mother, ready to call it a night. Suddenly a familiar hand grabbed him by one his shoulders and dragged him into the larder where the bartender and the saloon's owner used to storage the beverages and the few delicatessen items they would serve to their most loyal patrons only. There was not a single light in the larder except for the soft twinkle of the moon caressing the few trees around the saloon, swinging and swirling its way through the dirty window but he didn't need any light to know who was trapping him against the door – her perfume alone was all he needed to acknowledge her presence – a few notes of wood combined with the sweetness of summer fruits. He panicked, his cheeks anticipating the slap that would mark them for good as if he was some irredeemable sinner that was about to be crucified- yet she only placed her soft, warm lips on his and kissed him gently, sensing his total lack of experience._

_He stood still, perplexed and completely in awe at what was happening. Whatever he was thinking was unspeakable since his lips couldn't find another motion if it wasn't strictly related to the intimacy of a kiss. Whatever he was feeling was as crucial as well as it was hellacious, forcing his arms to hang by his sides, completely paralyzed - perhaps he thought that he could break the spell by moving or perhaps those feelings, new and certainly odd, were so overwhelming he didn't know what to do with his own body._

_She took a step backward and undressed fully in front of him, his eyes traveling her body unceasingly and clumsily as if he wasn't sure which corner of it was he supposed to look at first. Even though the figure of a naked lady was not unfamiliar to him it was the first time proximity was so determining – not only she was allowing him to observe her nudity, baptizing him in a way with her precious connivance but also she was there, just two feet away from him, completely within his reach. She smiled at his widened gaze and took his right hand, outstretching his whole arm – then she guided his extremity until it came to rest in one of her breasts, his sweaty palm discovering the softness living secretly in someone else's body, exploring uncharted territory for the first time. She repeated the same procedure with his other arm until his both hands were cupping her breasts, his manhood now irreversibly awoken, thronging against his underwear._

_What was her name?_

* * *

"When was the last time you've been with an Earthrealmer?" she asked in the lowest tone possible, interrupting his musings. The meaning of her words carried an intimacy he would not reciprocate no matter how impure her demeanor was willing to get. "Does it feel the same with an Outwolder?" she went on, unleashing a power she knew could lead her straight to her doom yet each word almost whispered was meant to caress that sense of manhood she was certain he still possessed. Those foreign senses, new and ungoverned by fear or hesitation, were creating a believer in her, making her think that perhaps a detail could be good enough to get her home after all.

Could it be that simple?

She went back to her chair with a new cadence in her walk – his eyes traveled from her hips to her neck with such poise she couldn't help but notice that the man was not unfamiliar to the flirting she was offering.

Only he would not take it.

_Cowboy up, Black._

She sat down as he cleared his throat, his lips tight, unwelcoming.

"Go on." He commanded abruptly, his vision readjusting to the real situation at hand: extracting all possible information from that woman. "The rebel-seekers. What is it that they do exactly?" his look, now more impersonal and defiant than before was letting her know that no matter how tempting the bonfire, he would not choose to burn.

He pressed the tip of his gun firmly against her chest again: enough of that woman playing tricks on him.

"They mostly chase down the remaining Tarkatans that hide in the Kuatan Jungle, capture them alive then bring them to the emperor. He pays them in return." She explained, only pausing briefly to take a sip from the cup previously used by Black himself, his eyes never leaving hers. "Now imagine - if a Tarkatan is worth a handful of coins, you are a ticket to paradise." Black's gaze widened with surprise, he was not expecting that – he would never be comfortable being somebody else's prey – he had always been the hunter.

"Why?"

"The official statement from the palace is that you went missing in action, I guess they presume you died out there, at the hands of a bunch of wild Tarkatans." She took another sip, then continued: "The people from the palace have been searching for your body for the last week or so but of course, they won't find you unless they come knocking," she signaled the door with the hand she was using to hold the cup while her free hand came to rest on the very same weapon that was incessantly threatening to end her life. "Guess who came knocking instead?" she asked, the tone of her voice providing an intrigue that was too easy to resolve.

"The rebel-seekers." Black guessed.

"Just imagine how big the prize would be for them – the missing official guard returns to the palace escorted by them and he's not dead, no; he's alive and kicking. You do the math." She concluded.

"What they do… that's my job." Black seemed to consider momentarily, still trying to assimilate the idea that somebody else was being paid money that should have been  _his_  money to do his own job.

"Yes, but I guess it all came down to the point when they said ' _if this 200-year-old Earthrealmer cowboy can do it, maybe it's not that hard'._ " She knew she had gone overboard with that last ironic remark but the audacity in her words didn't seem to be enough to cause him any harm. In fact, with each tiny bit of insurgency she was only alienating her own condition – all the while he remained pensive, all the information she was providing him with was adding more ingredients to an already complicated equation he was trying to solve.

"The emperor never mentioned them," Black retorted, letting out those words as a sullen whisper as he was clearly finding it hard to believe that the Kahn would ever hide such information from his own enforcers. The question lingered in the room - whether those men would affect his duties or not was the enigma he would have to resolve. He scratched his chin, allowing himself a moment to take it all in. After some seconds in silence, he proceeded with his interrogation: "And what about you?" she could feel the oppression in her chest lifting little by little. "What brought you here?"

"Reasons.”

_Reasons?_

"What reasons?" he frowned, impatiently.

"Reasons," the woman repeated, upset by his insistence, "and don't act like you don't know that there is a bunch of us here; a bunch big enough to create a small legion if necessary," she raised her voice gradually, infuriated. "Everyone had their reasons to leave Earthrealm; yet I don't think you go knocking door by door, pretending to be taking part in some sort of population census, asking each and every one of us what brought us here," The veins at the sides of her neck were now perfectly visible as tension was being released through her yelling – "And what brought  _you_  here, Black?" she dared to ask him, pushing him slightly – both of them knew her question was more of a symbolism than an actual interrogation yet it was enough for him to see red all around. "You wanted to know about the rebel-seekers, this is all I have to tell you; enough with the witch hunt; I saved your life for God's sake," she stood up all of a sudden, her fervent hands now airborne, gesticulating pompously.

Black stood up as well kicking his chair violently with the back of his ankle. He pushed her against the wall and placed the tip of his gun against the side of her head while his stronghold immobilized her – the full length of his body now acting as an impenetrable wall of muscle and anger pressed hard against her. "Let me explain you some shit," he started; his tone, vindictive and obscure, full of sarcasm, "you said that they want me because I'm some kind of profit on legs now. Explain to me then why they brought me here, to you. And you better convince me that you have never helped them before – otherwise, I'll go back to the palace but with you as my prisoner."

"You can't," her voice slapped, certain. "The emperor knows about them - if you tell him I'm their healer I don't think he's going to press any charges against me."

"I'm his enforcer; I could accuse you of stealing food from the hand of the emperor himself if I wanted to, no one would believe a word you say." With those simple words, he made it clear that all of her bravado was no more than a poorly constructed fantasy that he would never buy. "And most important, those men are taking  _my_  money – and you are helping them.  _Healing_  them." He grabbed her by the hair and started to walk towards the door, taking her with him.

"Just like I helped  _you_ ," she pleaded, realizing that there was nothing she could do to stop him – he was a hurricane threatening to eradicate her from the surface of a world that wasn't even hers. They left the house as Black's furious pace seemed to pinpoint towards the palace, all the while he dragged her along his own restless body – even though she was kicking and screaming he was too strong for her, her arms battered and subjugated by his sudden tyranny. The fact that he was paying no mind to her little rebellion forced her to accept the idea that wasting her energy in such an impossible task was stupid of her, to say the least. He noticed it, as her pace changed accompanying her attitude. She was lighter now – the futile resistance was over.

Black stopped his marching – "What?" he asked.

"I'm dead anyway," – was her only answer.

The gunslinger let go of her immediately, expecting the woman to run away the second she realized she was free from his grip but to his surprise, she did not – she stayed there, standing motionless by his side. Black took a deep breath and scratched his chin, trying and failing to understand the situation. Then he grabbed her by her shoulders violently and rushed to push her against a wall, the darkness from an eerie, God's forgotten alleyway enveloped them:

"You have to know, I don't usually treat a woman like this," he said, before using one of his elbows to keep her chin up, staggered in the dark corner. "I know your kind – what do you want from me?"

She shook her head, moving her neck angrily from side to side understanding that the man would never help her get home – coming clean about her situation was only going to make things even more difficult for her. The helplessness of her own situation blinded her, agitated her, as she tried to slap him in the face, her hands failing miserably due to the distance they could never cover. Black turned her around, making her face meet the wall, his elbow still acting as a barrier pressed hard against her collarbones.

"And you have to know, I actually know how to use a gun," the woman said, grasping for air now, as her hands traveled to the holders placed around his waist, trying to steal one of his weapons. She somehow managed to reach one of his pistols but her fingertips weren't strong enough for her to hold on to it and so the gun fell to the ground, the sound of metal kissing the concrete filled her with frustration. Black used his free hand to hold her neck from behind, the weight of his body restricting her moves, then he reached for the fallen gun with one smooth kick – the weapon was flying in the air now, heading towards him – it landed on his hand, the same hand that only a few seconds ago was pinning her head to the wall.

Black grinned, satisfied, his vision fully adjusted to the darkness of the corner now, allowing his gaze to wander and find its way to the small of her back – perception, the sudden reckoning of the Other's body, just like it had happened more than a century ago. The smell of nervous sweating combined with the delicate natural perfume of the skin was overwhelming, almost inviting, as he felt his weight caving in, crushing against her back. The dark larder or the obscure redoubt they were occupying seemed to be the same place now, melting in time, suffocating his judgment. Proximity had become once again an unrelenting guest daring him to explore a territory that was uncharted no more, yet each singularity, each individuality was worth the thrill.

_What was her name?_

Suddenly the girl in the larder and that stranger there with him, awakening his senses, were molded into the same person, they were joined together by his contrived senses – the same old senses talking about the remaining of a human condition that had never truly forsaken him even though it could only shine through his most ulterior, primal urges - the girl in the larder and that woman breathing heavily against his chest were a metaphor talking about existence itself; they could be the same side of two different stories, they could be nobody and everybody at the same time, they could even be any woman that he had ever held in his arms – only this time the embrace was far from tender and the stranger sharing that moment with him was not ready to cave in so easily.

"I know you do." He said, almost whispering in her ear, as he remembered watching her cleaning up a gun back in the house, the day he collapsed. The delicacy of the craft that he had witnessed in her was reminding him that she wasn't just some damsel in distress. She had the potential to become a dagger, only she needed to get sharpened, reverberated by a darker figure. He smirked sardonically as if imagining himself becoming that darker shade willing to contribute to the revelation of her obscure side.

She felt his thrill come crashing down against her skin, his arrogance sending shivers down her spine. That was it – that was her chance, perhaps her last chance.

She trusted her instincts, taking advantage of having the smaller body, and turned around quickly breaking free from the imprisonment of his body, yet remaining against the wall, now facing him. Knowing that the laceration in his stomach would still be far from completely healed, she buried her left hand, now curled into a fist, right in it, instantly gaining a groan in response. With Black longing for air and trying to grab his own abdomen with trembling hands, it was easy for her to take his own gun from his grasp and threaten him with it as blood had started to stream down his fingers once again.

He was powerless.

He was weak.

He was human.

She hesitated about what to do next: she couldn't just leave him there - even though his intentions had nothing to do with hers there was still a light she was willing to follow. That man in pain was an opportunity waiting to happen. She grabbed him firmly by his hair and placed her lips beside his left ear: "They all think you were ambushed and killed by Tarkatans but you weren't, and that's a fact. I've seen the slashes caused by Tarkatans – yours don't look anything like it so I guess you were attacked by something else, something entirely different that no one else but you saw because if they did, they wouldn't be blaming the Tarkatans," she paused briefly, as if trying to find the strength to hit him with her best shot: "now I've heard a lot of things about you that fit this person I have come to know - thinking it over, perhaps you were attending some business of your own that has nothing to do with the emperor's; perhaps you took advantage of the riot, you left your group, abandoning your men in the battlefield so no one would notice you gone," she used her other hand, the one holding his gun, to keep his chin upwards, making sure he was paying attention to the final stockade: "perhaps they never found your body because you weren't even there."

As bruised and as jaded as he was, he grinned ominously nonetheless and clapped his hands together until the sarcasm was popping their ears. "There it is," he said, his voice igniting her.

"And maybe you're so comfortable fooling around with me because you know I'm right – you went looking for something or somebody that has nothing to do with your duties for the Kahn but you were beaten up so badly by it that now you can't just return to the palace because your story is not convincing enough and you have nothing to show for it," she grinned briefly, amused by her own conclusions. "Every healer or doctor at the palace will notice your wounds weren't inflicted by Tarkatans."

He tried to snatch the gun from her hand as the shiny weapon seemed to be pleading to be reunited with its rightful owner but as minutes went by, he started to feel weaker – the same wound had been re-opened, again, and the pain was taking its toll on him.

"You'll be coming back home with me. Now I need to patch you up again,” she said, her voice was resolute but shaky at the same time. The nervousness provoked by her very own outburst was getting the best of her. Black grimaced through clenched teeth as if he was pleased to see the darker side of her finally showing. That was the moment they both had been waiting for: both of them were weak and strong at the same time, each in their own way.

* * *

After a walk that seemed to last an eternity, they came back to the house. The woman closed the door behind her and helped him undress. Then he lay down on the bed again, still wide awake but definitively weakened. The woman removed the now soaked in the blood bandages that were covering his stomach and replaced them with new ones, pressing her hands firmly against his skin to stop the bleeding. Both of them were tired, yet none of them wanted to go to sleep; mistrust still cutting through the air like a knife. The wolves in the room were sensing each other's vicious cravings. The woman took a seat beside the window as she witnessed Black's body still fighting the excruciating pain of a re-opened wound. She leaned her back against the chair, the back of her neck feeling the wall behind her. She stared at him from the distance – even though she knew that by worsening his laceration she would be undoing her own work she was positive that, in time, all her efforts would prove useful.

A single drop of blood resurfaced from his body, staining the new bandages. The woman stood up and walked towards him, then she leaned closer to readjust the dressing by applying some extra pressure, making it tighter than before.

"What do you want?" he finally managed to say, the air abandoning him as she tugged at his bandages "they  _all_ want something."

The woman avoided eye contact for as long as she could; only daring to look at him once she felt satisfied with her work. With his wound dressed properly, she sat back on the chair – her eyes were drifting away, reminiscing: "You know, when we first came here, we found Harry sitting on a stool, all by himself, in the front porch of this very same house. We knew he was one of us, an Earthrealmer; just by the way he looked. Truth is, I don't really know his story, every time I would try to ask him about his life in Earthrealm or why he had come here he would just… well, be Harry."

"You're clumsy." Erron's voice crossed the small distance separating the bed and the chair but this time, its tone was neither dark nor shallow – it was reflective and somewhat serene. "Am I your first?" he asked, his eyes fixed on her legs as she flexed them against her chest and embraced them with her arms.

"No… Yes." The woman shook her head acknowledging the meaning of his words.

"Clumsy…" he said, his voice was even softer now. Her eyes contacted his -

"You're not my first restless patient, but I guess nobody likes being injured or wounded, so I never really blame them for wanting to leave the minute they set foot in this house." She explained as she approached the bed then sat down next to him with her eyes fixed on the window. It was as if eye contact was a privilege she was not willing to negotiate from that moment on now that she was finally being sincere – one look at that man would be enough to remind her who he was, and why she needed him so badly. "But you are my first at the same time because you're not one of them – you’re not a rebel-seeker."

"That's why you don't know shit about how things should be done. You patched me up, then you hurt me again to finally patch me up once more, losing time by doing what was already done. You learn as you go," Black said disdainfully as his eyes began to give in, gradually succumbing to slumber. "I got bad news for you: granted, if you wanna be really good at somethin’, there's always gonna be a learning curve for ya and that shit takes some time. Unfortunately, you don't have that time." His eyes were closed now but she could see he was fighting to stay awake.

"I know," she whispered, the knot in her throat almost choking her, "but it's the best I can do."

"You'll have to do better. I could have killed you a thousand times today."

"I still don't understand why you haven't," she lowered her head as he opened his eyes once more.

"There's more to you than meets the eye, I’m sure of that," he confessed with his gaze fixed on the ceiling- "You're hiding something and, one day, those secrets will pay off, and guess who'll be there to collect the prize?" Even though the meaning of his words was dark and speculative his tone was surprisingly calm, as if he had nothing left to hide anymore.

"Then you'll kill me."

"See? Honesty _is_  good." The mockery of his remark was preaching yet she knew he was being completely sincere: he was no prey, he was Erron Black. He would always be the hunter.

He closed his eyes again, losing the battle after a long night that was now fading away, a new day enveloping the city.

"The name's Alex," she said without even turning slightly to face him, giving up her identity, at last, her eyes fixed in the crescendo of the new day's light ricocheting through the blinds; projecting still-weak incandescence that would soon take over the room.

He smirked, satisfied, his voice was weaker now, standing at the verge of a oneiric state - "I've heard some of the strangest names here in Outworld, most of them being just guttural sounds that usually choke in one's throat but for an Earthrealmer, I knew no one would be crazy enough to name their daughter Dakota." Apparently, it was true, the mercenary still had his very own credo regarding the appropriate and the inappropriate in terms of family and good manners but as appealing and charming as that may seem, Alex knew she couldn't trust him; at least not yet. Proven it would only make him more human to her eyes he still was the same volatile, sometimes volcanic man that would end her the minute the odds turned in his favor.

The feeling was unsettling – could all those colors belong in the same prism? The man now asleep in her bed was the mercenary that was only in for his personal gain, but he also was the remains of a man that was struggling with his very own human condition, recognizing and acknowledging her by the shape of her own body. He was the definitive one; the one that couldn't be stripped of his convictions but he also was the unstable one; exposing lust and violence as the two different sides of the same coin - her coin, now flipping relentlessly in the air, waiting for his hand to determine her luck – or maybe just her lack of it.


	4. Icarus

Arc I

Chapter IV

**Icarus**

* * *

  _"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."_

Umberto Eco ― Foucault's Pendulum

* * *

When she woke up it was midday, and the thick sensation in her mouth disgusted her – her lips were numb and her jaw felt rigid, perhaps too rigid. Alex rubbed her eyelids with her hands as she tried to focus her vision then yawned, stretching her arms above her head. Then she looked over her shoulder and noticed his absence: Black was gone.

She cursed under her breath, her consciousness fully awake by the solemn realization of her new-found solitude, then sat on the bed where she stayed motionless for a while. Her eyes traveled from her own hands, now resting helplessly on her lap, to the chair placed right next to the only window in the room where all his belongings should have been.

After a moment, she stood up and walked towards the doorstep when an unexpected sight made her stop in her tracks, her feet now anchored to the floor – a shiny, tiny glowing piece of metal was stuck in between two floorboards a few inches away from the bed. She walked back, kneeled down and took it: it was a silver coin, an unevenly shaped, brand new golden coin. She let it rest in the palm of her right hand, her skin sensing its obnoxious weight: it was Black's.

Money, she thought – it was the only way he knew how to get things done.

She sighed; the indignation caused in her by his poor exit had now been intrinsically mixed with the turmoil of feeling low and used. Then she noticed it, a second coin, barely visible, shinning sarcastically from under the blanket that was kissing the floor. She took it, too, and closed her palm creating a fist – a fist infused with a fierce she could not extinguish nor vent because the one causing all those feelings was nowhere to be found. She laughed, bitterly, still sensing the weight of the two coins nesting heavily inside her tight fist: the son of a bitch had left her all alone, and she hadn't even had the courage to tell him why she needed him so badly. She was infuriated; her mind was a razorblade corrupting her thoughts and clouding her judgment. Was that money some sort of a thank you, maybe? Or even worse, maybe those coins had just simply slipped from his pocket and they were no more than a reminder of what she was: something left behind, something forgotten, buried in the maze of yesteryears and oblivion.

And to think she had even allowed herself to think that perhaps he could have helped her.

And to think she had even allowed him to undress her with his eyes – with his sinful, wrathful eyes. To think she had even thought about submitting herself to the trial of his hands, to the verdict of his most ulterior hunger because if nothing ventured, nothing gained.

She closed her eyes as she breathed in and out, trying to calm herself down. There were noises coming from the outside, a crescendo of whispers and voices combined with the sound of countless feet moving, marching nonstop. She stood up, curious, and opened the window – a crowd was walking down the street, all of her neighbors were there, the only and most familiar faces she had in Outworld now that Harry was dead. She frowned, not really sure of what was happening. Then she placed the golden coins in her pocket, grabbed a large, black pashmina with which she covered her head and walked out of the house.

The moment she was out in the streets she immediately started to feel like she was being swept along by a tidal wave composed by a thousand faces. Alex quickly stretched the edges of her pashmina and managed to cover her shoulders with it, making her way through the crowd.

"Where are you going?" she asked an old lady that was marching by her side.

"To the palace. The Kahn has an announcement to make," the woman replied before getting lost in the immensity of bodies surrounding her.

Alex tried to turn around and get back home instinctively but it was too late – the crowd was acting like a thick, impenetrable wall that would force her to keep going no matter what. She lowered her head, trying to make her undeniably Earthrealmer appearance fit amongst the countless Outworlders walking around her. The rumors were spreading as those anonymous, restless voices continued their song:

_He's back._

_He's alive._

_He survived all alone in the jungle, injured, starving, and now he's back._

_He made it._

_He's back._

She tried to focus on the indistinctive chatter but there were too many voices playing tricks inside her ears – the only thing she was certain of was that they all were talking about the same person: Black. He was making himself visible; the bastard – she thought – was showing the rebel-seekers that he was no prey. Suddenly a hand grabbed her by one of her shoulders and Alex turned around quickly, her hand a perfect fist.

"I guess we'll witness the return of the prodigal son…" an unfamiliar masculine face told her using the most charming English accent – another Earthrealmer who was visibly unhappy with the situation. He was tall and young and, like her, had chosen to cover most of his features under an old rag. "The Kahn must be happy now, all of his closest hooligans will be reunited, isn't it delightful?" he added.

"The only thing that matters, in the end, is that we're all piling up in the same shithole," Alex retorted softly, not wanting to be heard by the wrong audience. They went on marching side by side in silence for a few more moments. As they got closer to the palace they began to notice that the crowd was euphoric, they were loud and happy, and excited – Alex suddenly reflected in the same low tone she had used before: "The bastard cheated death, so what? He has been doing so since the 1800s." She looked around her - her gaze was sterile and empty as if she couldn't share nor understand the poetics being offered to her. It all seemed like a carnival of lost souls, a rare demonstration of power and submission that she was being forced to witness. Her fellow Earthrealmer was nowhere to be seen now, presumably lost in the crowd.

_He's back._

_He's alive._

All of a sudden the crowd stopped marching and a line of guards became visible from where she was standing – they were informing the citizens about the itinerary they were supposed to take from that point on now that the mass was about to enter the Emperor's courtyard. They were organized and armed in case a riot should arise. The people quieted; listened to the carefully chosen directions they were given and obeyed, creating a never-ending queue consisting of no more than five people in a row. They walked into the courtyard in silence, all eyes pointing to the Emperor's balcony. Alex looked over her shoulder, taking in the view. They were intrinsically human. No matter if they said Earthrealmers were inferior in comparison to them, they were the same thing - docile, pliable, malleable beings in the eternal quest of finding something better, something greater.

The monumental figure of the emperor emerged from the shadows of the balcony and walked towards the crowd. He seemed satisfied as he placed his hands on the railings; his voice was stern yet full of wisdom.

"Today our family is reunited," Kotal began as his personal guards, the selected group of picturesque individuals, placed themselves a few steps behind him. "Today we show all those remaining rebels that are still out there that we're stronger, and that we won't give up so easily." The emperor continued as he pointed his index finger to the sky, the gesture was a battle-cry, spurring his followers. They were chanting his name now, praising their emperor to the skies for the imminent good news they were about to hear. Alex was trying to make her way through the excited crowd, nudging people as she got closer. There he was, standing right behind the emperor, flanked by Ermac, Reptile, Ferra and Torr. "It is with pleasure, affection, and esteem that I welcome you back home," the Kahn concluded as he turned around to shake Black's hand. The crowd went wild now that the rumors had been made official – the mercenary had cheated death. He was back. He was alive.

Black waved his hand to the crowd, shyly but proudly – it was obvious, even to the most ignorant eyes, that he was the sort of man who had always tried to avoid the limelight because he didn't like the attention but that was a special occasion: he wasn't just embracing popularity; he was sending out a message. After a few seconds, the emperor and his personal guards retreated to the inside of the palace and the crowd began to disassemble slowly as people started to walk the long way home. Alex took a good look at the now-empty balcony as if expecting to see Black once more.

"There you are," the English accent brought her back to reality, "been searching for you all over the place." The young Earthrealmer was approaching her, a widened smile on his face. "Can you believe it? They were celebrating the bastard!"

Alex eyed the boy speculatively.

"Black, I mean," he clarified, "they are happy he's alive -" he rolled his eyes mockingly "when they should be terrified that such a monster is still around."

"I know." She said as both of them started to walk away from the scene.

"Did he saw you?" the boy asked, causing Alex to stop. "I thought he would say something, not a speech but a thank you, you know? After saving his life." His eyes were cold and menacing. He was one of them.

Alex tried to run but it was too late, the man grabbed her from behind using one of his arms, his other extremity was busy signaling a guard to come over, "greedy piece of shit," he said to her face as the guard noticed them. "I finally found her." The boy said to the guard, the English accent had vanished from his diction, "this woman has been stealing food from my family for ages now. And she's an Earthrealmer," the treacherous boy sentenced, as he took the pashmina that had been covering her. As exposed and confused as she was, she couldn't even find the strength to articulate the simplest of words – she just stood there, her eyes widened with disbelief. The guard took her firmly by her arm and walked beside her, as they were headed towards the palace.

"I didn't do it," she said softly, almost to herself, as the guard finished registering her. It was pointless, she knew, to even try to defend herself even if the accusation was false.

The guard walked her to her cell and left her there, all alone, in the dark room. The coldness and the dampness of the place were truly unsettling. She sat in the old, battered cot and covered her face with her hands: she was a woman, an Earthrealmer and they had found the gold coins she had in her pocket. Of course, it wasn't much in terms of money but in Outworld, golden coins were exclusively for the richer families, individuals in high political positions and official guards and workers of the palace. The rest of the citizens used a different currency – different in terms of material, not in value since the scale of bills and coins was the same for everyone no matter the social stratum. As tears started to stream down her face, she recalled Black's visage as he waved at the crowd: she felt helpless, hopeless and all of her plans were vanishing now – her body light and full of sorrow was giving up gradually as the euphoria following the events of the afternoon had slowly started to disappear. The distinctive sound of metal against metal made her open her eyes: it was another guard, tapping a silver tray against the bars of her cell. He handed her a piece of old bread and a cup of water.

"I demand to have a word with Mr. Black," Alex said.

"Prisoners don't make demands." The guard answered coldly.

"The golden coins you confiscated from me…" she began, sipping the water "you know they don't belong to the man that claims I’m a thief,"

The guard eyed her suspiciously, looking taciturn as if he was afraid to join the dots and see the bigger picture.

"The coins are Black's," she said.


	5. Rendezvous / Good Deeds

Arc I

Chapter V

**Rendezvous / Good Deeds**

* * *

 " _He was old and wise, which meant tired and disappointed..."_

T.E. Lawrence — Seven Pillars of Wisdom

* * *

_The girl in the larder smiled, her body allowing him to travel a distance he had never dared to imagine before. Jessica. Her name was Jessica. She moved near him and started to unbutton his trousers, finding his underwear and his precarious sense of manhood waiting for her, calling her on. He stretched his arms above his head yet his hands were still unable to touch the ceiling. He was sweating, panting nervously, unsure of what to expect but imagining a glorious outcome._

Knock, knock.

_She moved her hands in such an exciting way the young boy experiencing those sensations for the first time couldn't help but succumb to the urgent need of moving slightly, almost spasmodically, closing his eyes to anticipate pleasure, trying to take it all in. Her hands were everywhere, now colliding against the infatuation waiting to be released; his senses working overtime, his brain on strike. If the word 'puberty' had existed back then, it would have saved him so many questions about the things he was feeling. He wanted to run, and hide beneath his bed but he also had a powerful wish to stay, to grow roots from his feet and just stay there, in that larder in the dark, with her hands teasing him in all the right places. Jessica. Her name was Jessica. Or was it Mandy? No. Amanda, never Mandy. But that was definitely Jessica, and now she was on her knees, giving him the naughtiest smile he would see in a very long time._

Knock, knock.

_Amanda, never Mandy, was a whole other story. She never got on her knees, granted, but she never really needed to either. By the time he met Amanda, he was already fourteen and she was just a couple days younger than him. Beautiful, sweet, diaphanous Amanda. She was the daughter of the local banker, a widower who became a regular patron of the saloon trying to find comfort in the company of strangers shortly after his wife had passed. Amanda was engaged to the barber, a man who was almost thirty years older than her, and she had the stupidest idea ever: she didn't want to marry the man, she thought she was too young to become a wife, a mother; she said she wanted to see the world - whatever that meant, and she was convinced that a woman was only supposed to marry a man because she loved him, not because his father was forcing a deal to get rid of a daughter with an uncanny resemblance to her defunct mother._

_The man was having a hard time coping with the loss of his wife, they would say._

_They all were having a hard time coping with a variety of tragedies, according to Amanda; and she was right._

_A short time after meeting Amanda he came to the stage of realizing that there was another kind of pleasure in this life; another sort of thrill that has nothing to do with the longing for physical intimacy, with the desperation of wanting to belong inside someone else, with that hunger so peculiar; so significant, so fiercely capable of feeding the soul with only the ashes of a carnal paradise. He understood that there was more to life than having another body toying with his, though he ultimately had the chance to explore her body – once. That was around the time when his mother got sick. Those were tough times._

_He buried his mother on the same day Amanda got married to the barber – that flame she had ignited, never fully extinguished. How long has it been? He should have stayed; he should have been there for her instead of just leaving town and settling down for mere crumbs and rumors._

" _Her father nearly killed her; she wasn't a virgin anymore when she married the barber, the man claims he never even touched a hair in her head before the wedding night…"_

" _It must have been that boy, that one, you know? From the saloon, the singer's son. Poor kid, so troubled…"_

_Beautiful, sweet, diaphanous Amanda; the prettiest girl in town. Amanda, never Mandy – she truly became a breath of fresh air for him during his darkest hour. They should have run away together. They should have seen the world together; whatever that meant._

Knock, knock.

_I heard you the first time._

Knock, knock.

_But Jessica, let's get back to Jessica; let's not go places we don't want to go, Black. She was on her knees and the need was out of control, his sex on fire, pleading her to touch him, to open the gates and finally welcome him to a world that felt so close for the very first time - so close, that it made him feel like he belonged there, in a universe full of thrill and sensations he could not put into words no matter how hard he tried._

Knock, knock.

_What now?_

Knock, knock.

_Damn._

The lone cowboy opened the door of his private chamber to find a guard standing in front of him; his expression was blank, unreadable. The man handed him the two golden coins then lowered his eyes involuntarily only to find Black's erection, impossible to disguise, pressed hard against his underwear.

"Never saw one of these before?" Black retorted, upset by the guard's intromission but not ashamed in the slightest.

"These belong to you, Mr. Black." The guard answered quickly, blushing under his skull mask, regretting that such an indiscretion could have offended Black. Even though the mercenary was the owner of a certain reputation that placed him among the cruelest of womanizers in town, they all knew there were definitive lines not meant to be crossed.

Erron scratched his forehead for a second; trying to understand the hand he had been dealt. As a matter of fact, he was not programmed to say no to money – ever, but those two coins could only have come from one place. He inspected the unevenly shaped, tiny, shiny pieces of metal and asked: "Where?" The tone of his voice was distant and cold, instantly dismissing the shame the guard was still feeling.

"One of our prisoners told me those were yours. She had them in her pocket." Black's eyes widened involuntarily but he quickly outran the surprise that had taken the shape of those two coins now resting in his hand.

_There's a she._

_Damn._

"Earthrealmer?" Black inquired the guard once again, his face expressionless, his manhood returning to a more neutral state. "Pale, red-haired, blue eyes, huh?"

The guard nodded quietly - "Do you know her, sir?"

Erron raised one of his eyebrows then gave the guard a diminishing look, slamming the door in his face -"Yes. She's a pain in the ass," the cowboy spat under his breath, his words endorsed by a combination of feelings so alien to him he couldn't place them; dissect them, shatter them into a million pieces.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

He put on his black trousers and grabbed a pack of smokes and a little box of matches from one of the drawers in his wooden desk; the treasures he would collect every now and then from different confiscations and aborted illegal operations. He leaned against the door for a while, debating briefly whether to go see her or not. How did she manage to get herself captured after all? It had to be them, the rebel-seekers, he thought, but instead of killing her themselves they were allowing the rightful laws of Outworld to do the dirty work they didn't want to do with their own hands. Black sighed, frustrated, his naked back still glued to the door.

He waited for a while to make sure the guard was gone – then he placed the coins in his pocket and opened the door, taking a good look at both sides of the empty corridor. There was not a single sound, not a single voice interrupting the nightfall landscape of the now asleep palace. Just one pistol with a single bullet in its chamber was all he would need. Of course, there would be the night guard standing at the dungeon's gate but that would be a minor problem for the mercenary. He walked, barefoot, flipping one of the coins with his right hand, perhaps determining her luck, or maybe just her lack thereof.

He stood at the gates of the dungeon, the weather was colder down there somehow and there was a chill giving him goosebumps all across his torso and forearms. The night guard was asleep, leaning against a gunpowder barrel.  _How very western of you_ , the gunslinger thought as he approached him. Black took the handful of keys the man had hung up in a protuberance in the rocky wall behind him, then entered the prison – with a little bit of luck the inmates would be asleep as well. He wandered among the cells cautiously, trying to be as stealthy as possible, knowing that most of those criminals had been incarcerated down there as the result of his services to the Kahn.

_Thief._

_Thief._

_Murderer._

_Thief._

_Rapist._

_Rebel._

_Thief._

_Stupid Earthrealmer._

There she was - sleeping in her cot, her orange hair acting as a lighthouse for his tired eyes, making her visible, distinguishable from the others.

"You tend to trust people a little too much, don't you?" Black asked, raising his voice so she could hear him. His left arm was airborne as he was holding the two golden coins with his fingers, exhibiting them as if they were a trophy.

"I didn't know," she retorted, not leaving the cot. "And you left." Alex's voice ricocheted through the dark side of the small cell. She stood up and walked towards the door, eyeing him at the other side of the bars.

"My bad." He said as he opened the gate. She tried to escape but he shook his head and walked inside the cell, closing the door as he came in but not locking it. He reached for the pack of smokes hidden in his pocket.

"You want one?" he offered.

"How do you…?" she asked, curious.

"I know a guy who knows a guy," he said as he stroke a match against the wall.

“That knows yet another guy," she added, nodding mockingly, “I can only assume,”

"And this guy knows a guy that knows some other guy," he finished, blowing out smoke. She shook her head rejecting the offer. He moved near her, and stroke another match to light the small torch placed against the cot.

"God, you look like shit," he told her the second the light reached her features.

"Charming as ever."

Her response was dry yet she knew he was right – the dampness and the coldness of that place were making a mess of her already damaged appearance. Gone were the days when her hair would glow like a bonfire. Her skin, far from being the captivating sight of sheer delicacy it used to be was now covered in dirt, polluted by a thick layer of dried sweat.

Black sat on the cot and she followed, sitting right beside him.

"These were Harry's actually. I guess they are yours now," the mercenary said as he placed a couple of golden coins on the cot right next to her, in that almost invisible spot separating his legs from hers, that parenthesis where his body ended and hers began. The orange light emanating from the torch was exposing each and every one of the bruises and small cuts she had scattered all over the visible parts of her skin. He couldn't help but wonder if those wounds were the outcome of her interactions with the rebel-seekers, considering that he had also seen the same bruises and cuts all over Harry. She looked away, ashamed – surprisingly enough she hadn't felt so ashamed when his eyes were traveling her body the night before; those eyes so full of lust and need were nothing in comparison to the look he was giving her now – a look full of pity, and perhaps, even remorse.

"Why are you here?" Alex demanded.

"I am here to perform my good deed," Black answered, his pistol now resting in his right hand. "I can end you now; you don't have to go through the execution, the shame – that's no way to have your life handed to you." He put out the cigarette and stood up, placing himself right in front of her, his shadow towering over the woman. "You saved my life; I get that - so this is my offer: I end you. I think it's a good way to go. It's quick, it's simple – and more importantly, it's honorable."

She raised her eyes to meet his as if waiting for the punch line – but it never came. Alex embraced herself with her own arms, the fact that he wasn't joking sent a shiver down her spine.

_Oh, crap._

"Then wager, woman or you'll be dead this time tomorrow," Black yelled, his roaring voice was testing a new pedagogy.

She said nothing; her eyes still clinging to his; the shock of her imminent death was paralyzing her.

“You gotta be shitting me,” he mumbled as he grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her violently: "what do you want from me?" he was almost screaming, "last night I threatened to end your life and instead of defending yourself you tended to my wounds and let me use your bed - I shouldn't have lived to see another day, anyone would have tried to murder me in my sleep but you didn't -" he paused, taking a deep breath and letting go of her, noticing her eyes were full of fear. "If you are so interested in keeping me alive then there must be something you want from me in return; something you want so desperately that you're willing to overlook the danger," his tone was calmer now yet she could see he was about to lose control, "why did you protect me?" he asked her, his tone was demanding, "you lied to them for me, they killed your partner; you sacrificed him so they couldn't get to me. Why?"

Her lips were sealed, she was unable to speak.

_There's no use. Kill her, kill her now._

"I want to go home." She finally managed to say, her voice weak, almost sobbing.

"You can't go back there." Black retorted quickly, unable to see the true tenor of her words.

"No. I want to go  _home_. I want to go back – to Earthrealm."

_Shit._

Alex moved near him, her voice still trembling: "Some time ago, a neighbor got hurt. We should have stayed out of it but I'm a doctor, so I helped him. I tended to his wounds and we took care of him until he got better – but the more he stayed with us the easier it got for him to notice we were Earthrealmers. So we made a deal: heal them whenever they would need our medical services and in exchange, they wouldn't sell us out. As you can see, we didn't have much of an option, really. Then there was you," she paused, regaining her composure, "and I thought you could help me get back home – it was stupid, I know, but you were the closest thing to an exit I've had ever since I set foot on this place. I couldn't risk it, I couldn't risk you. That's why I protected you, even at the cost of Harry's life," she paused, though only briefly, "that's what I want from you, Black, to help me get back home."

Black lowered his head and leaned against the bars, finding it hard to believe. All the subplots and intrigues he had imagined were fading, all those juicy secrets he had been trying to extract from that woman were mere castles in the air, disappearing at the slightest blow. He sighed, disappointed. He pointed his pistol at her, his finger on the trigger, aiming ruthlessly for her head.

"Use me. I can help," she pleaded, playing her last card.

_Don't be stupid, she knows. Kill her. Kill her now._

The mercenary tilted his head, "speak," his mouth betrayed him.

"You could use a doctor… Because I know you're not going to stop - I know you'll go after whatever it is that attacked you; you're hot-headed, it's in your nature – I helped  _them_  before, I can help  _you_  now," she said grinning softly, timidly, even though she had never felt so low before, "I know it's not much, but it's the only thing I have left to offer."

Black placed his gun in its holder again and sighed once more, she was just a frightened child wanting to go back home – no Mata Hari, no rebel in disguise, no nothing.

"I can't get you home," he said coldly, as he reached for the door.

"You can't or you won't?" She asked bitterly but he didn't answer. He just turned around and started to leave.

"That's it? You didn't even lock the door you moron," Alex retorted, almost offended to see that the only response to her story was pure, absolute indifference from him.

"I know,"

She left the cell and ran towards him, Black stopped marching and moved near her and put his hands at the sides of her waist, "Lei Chen Mountains," he said, and those were his only words. Then he took a step backward, letting go of her, and left.

"How I am supposed to get there?" Alex yelled, standing helplessly in the corridor.

_There's only so much I can do._

"Not my problem," the gunman whispered to himself, as his silhouette disappeared in the dark.


	6. Shadowboxer

Arc I

Chapter VI

**Shadowboxer**

* * *

  _"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire."_

Jorge Luis Borges ― Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

* * *

_"You shouldn't leave yet. It's not safe out there."_

_Annie had said those words to him as an attempt to make him stay but still, he paid no mind. He had to find her. A twenty-two-year-old Erron Black left the abandoned liquor store they had been using as a refuge during the last period of the civil war and started the long way back home. He wasn't precisely homesick but there were rumors – rumors about Amanda that he needed to check._

_He hadn't completely abandoned his duties as a soldier but he was no fool – war had found him one day, and it had procured an easy path for the young man who wanted to die, but the young man also knew that while some ideas were thriving, the cities of the South and their fragile skeleton composed by the antipathy of the most belligerent ideological infrastructure were collapsing all around him – so he decided to seek sanctuary before it was too late. He took the few possessions he had left back then and walked away from the battlefront, remaining available nonetheless, in case they needed him or his ever-evolving advanced marksman skills._

_He never wanted any company, but Annie followed him shortly after his departure._

_She was barely nineteen years of age back then, but there was not a single trace of innocence left in her. She was a nurse, an improvised yet fairly good nurse – one of the six female nurses that had been assigned to work with his battalion. She didn't really get the concept of war but she wasn't exactly an idealist either; she just thought both sides of the dispute were speaking different languages, making it impossible for communication to prevail. He had tried to explain to her on several occasions that there were actual ideals and convictions at stake but her attempts to diminish both causes seemed to meet no end and that was exasperating for him most of the times. However, the night when she knocked on the door of the abandoned liquor store he didn't really think about how annoying she could be from time to time – she was a familiar face, pulling him out of the tormenting sights of war and devastation. And she was welcomed._

_As weeks passed by, he began to see that she had somehow fallen for him. And for some time, he thought he had fallen for her as well – that was around the time when he began to wear a bandana to cover the lower half of his face. At first he thought he was just protecting his identity, but later on, he had no choice but to admit that by doing so, he was also protecting her. Such small, almost insignificant gestures were all they needed to admit they had developed a mutual understanding, ultimately translated into the notion of actually having feelings for each other, a fact that they both found unsettling but also immensely reassuring almost simultaneously._

_Back then, and thanks to her, the young man that just wanted to die had somehow managed to make some plans for the future: he would ask his uncle for a job once the war was over – his old uncle Jim worked in coal mining and as far as he was concerned, the man was in a favored position working as a manager or perhaps a supervisor. Annie wasn't so happy with the choices he was willing to make in order to endure a post-war life and make a living, but she knew she would stick with him no matter what – until the name Amanda stopped being a ghost and became a reality. The rumors were louder than ever: the barber was dead; she was finally free from that unwanted matrimony._

_At first he tried to reassure Annie that nothing would change, that he had already moved on and that Amanda was nothing but a sad memory, irreversibly connected to the day he lost his mother but as days passed, he realized that by staying there with Annie, by denying all those feelings he still had for Amanda, he would be fooling no one but himself – he wanted to run and find her, melt in an eternal embrace and never let go from that lovely child he had once loved so deeply. He found himself divided, torn between the one there by his side and the one whose absence was so vividly present he could feel it as a burden pinning him down to the ground. He never meant to hurt Annie, he never meant to cause her any harm or left her facing the sour echoes of abandonment so he tried to remain loyal to the love and caring affection she had been giving him for as long as he could._

_Annie never truly believed him each time he would say to her that he wouldn't go away, that he would stay right there with her. She wasn't ready to let him go so it never crossed her mind to tell him to go look for Amanda but she knew that at some point she would have to give him up, the truth irrevocable; he was in love with somebody else. That's why she tried to warn him not to go out that day – she knew he would not be back yet she wanted him to stay for a while longer - to consider the danger; to consider her._

_But the prospect of living a lie never truly suited him._

_There was no use in delaying the inevitable, he knew._

_He planted a soft kiss on her forehead, his lips already disgusted by that bittersweet aftertaste of knowing that he was willing to sacrifice one woman in order to save another one; like they were pieces of a puzzle, interchangeable and intertwined deep within his emotions – but that was back then; back in a time he could still call his own. Back in a time when he still cared about others or at least, cared enough to show it._

_He left shortly after noon, carrying nothing but his hat and his bandana; a simple short fire weapon and a rusted knife; nothing more, nothing less. It took him five days to get to his hometown; the precariousness in the landscape that he had left almost six years ago seemed to be a paradox lost in time: everything looked exactly the same but everything had irrefutably changed. He knocked on the door of the house Amanda used to share with the barber but to no avail, that place was nobody's home. The windows had been bricked up and cobwebs were covering every corner of the house. He turned around and made his way to his beloved saloon looking for a familiar face that could explain to him what had happened to Amanda. To his surprise, there was a new bartender, new girls, and new patrons. He placed his hat on the bar and asked:_

_"Excuse me; I'm looking for Miss Amanda Taggart."_

_"Never heard o’ her," the bartender replied harshly, without even looking at Black._

_Erron frowned as he sat down, his forearms resting on the bar in front of him. He took a deep breath and shook his head, admitting that his tongue and his lips were about to betray him and all of his convictions by using the name he had sworn he would never say out loud: "Farindon. Amanda Farindon. She was married to the old barber, Mr. William Farindon. I believe he passed away recently."_

_The bartender came closer to Erron and crossed his arms over his chest._

_"Oh yes, missus Farindon. She packed her bags and left town about two or three years ago. The barber died last month, that's true. But she was long gone by then, she didn't stand by her husband," the bartender moved closer and lowered his voice: "rumor has it that she had a lover, a soldier I believe. Anyway, we haven't heard from her in ages."_

_Erron stood up and nodded silently, then took his hat and left the place, too many bitter memories starting to get to him. As he was about to cross the door he turned around and looked at the bartender once more:_

_"Did they have any children?" he asked softly._

_The bartender simply shook his head and went back to his duties behind the counter. As Erron left the saloon he started to notice some familiar faces closing in on him – his old neighbors, carried by the tumultuous, swarming rumor of his return._

_"Thank God you're here, boy, we were worried sick about you," an old woman greeted him._

_"I'm fine," he said distantly as he waved his hand at her, his mind absent and obscured by the fact that Amanda was gone without a trace and the question, lingering before his eyes: a soldier? The old woman moved nearer and placed her hands on his shoulders, her gesture was warm, her concern genuine and tender:_

_"When we heard your entire battalion had been erased in that fire, we thought we wouldn't see you again – not that we were expecting you to come back here either, but your mother was such an angel, it was heartbreaking."_

_"What fire?" the obvious truth, paralyzing him._

_"Those bastards started a fire that killed everyone in that zone and destroyed every building. We just heard; so sad," the woman finished._

_As desperate as he was, he stole the first horse he saw and rode all the way back to the liquor store to make sure Annie was alright but the only things that were waiting for him were the ashes of the place that had sheltered them before and her dead body, buried between the still-burning foundations and the collapsing infrastructure. He got on his knees and cried, absorbed and powerless, completely alone for the very first time._

* * *

She still remembered most of the path; of that she was sure. She doubted she could just use the front door but that seemed somehow decontextualized now that her feet were still glued to the ground beneath her – her eyes still fixed, clinging to the vexation left by the remains of Black's silhouette vanishing in the dark. The path stretching before her, bifurcated and obscure, presented her to the fake possibility of choice and it was obnoxious.

Perhaps he had left thinking that he had only unlocked a door, that she was still in control of her own will and destiny, but he had done so much more than that – he had deprived her of a true option; he had managed to close every other possible doors for her, he had slammed them all in her face and had left her there, plunged to the most gratuitous of perils: the one misleading her into thinking that she still had a choice when in fact, there was nothing left for her to choose.

This new-found and only partial freedom was unbearable. He had spared her life as an act of intrepid gratification but that man was never going to help her – he had masterfully imprisoned her in his most ulterior, perverse game: she would have to play by his rules and gain nothing in return. He wouldn't get her back home, he would only keep her alive and use her as much as he wanted – there was no true difference between Black and the rebel-seekers. Only Black's methods were infinitely more intricate and far more subtle and effective.

She had been played.

She couldn't go back to her cell with an unlocked door – it would be simply impossible for her to explain why the door was suddenly unlocked. Why had she chosen to stay and face an inescapable execution instead of leaving? They would think she was guilty of so much more than just simply stealing food; she would be interrogated and even possibly tortured in order to extract data from her; data she didn't even possess, and also, data about what? But if she chose to go, if she chose to play along, she would officially become a fugitive. She knew they would hunt her down so going back to the house she used to share with Harry was out of the question and she truly had no other place to go – despite being acquainted with some other Earthrealmers she was reluctant to ask them for help now that she knew that the rebel-seekers' cause had ramifications that reached longitudes and latitudes she could have never imagined. That young Earthrealmer boy who had accused her was the living testimony of that. She would have to do as she was told and get to the Lei Chen Mountains as quickly as possible but that was a matter that would have to wait – her most urgent need: getting out of the palace.

She hesitated briefly whether to grab the torch that was still burning in her cell or not but decided the luminosity emanating from it would be too difficult to conceal. The place was barely lit, indeed, but that would have to do. She walked down the corridor and faced the dungeon's main gate – to her surprise, there was a wooden bar on the ground, holding the door open by just a few inches.  _So considerate…_  - Alex whispered softly as she kicked the bar away as silently as possible and opened the gate carefully – not fully, of course, but leaving enough room for her body to escape. When she was about to close it back she found the night guard sleeping against a gunpowder barrel –  _how very western of you, you could just ask him for a hat_  she thought as she walked away in her tiptoes, finally leaving the door as it was.

A few more steps led her to an empty hall – the kitchen was at her right and the dining room reserved exclusively for the guards was at her left. There was a third option, though, right next to the dining room – a third door: the entrance to the old catacombs. She considered briefly if escaping through such a creepy place was even a viable option – she wasn't really familiar with the architecture of the building she was trying to escape from so she decided to stick to a simpler plan: going through the kitchen, and then try to find a back door. If there was one thing she was positive of it was the importance of ranks and social statuses for the Outworld culture so she suspected that there would be a secondary exit, reserved almost exclusively for the serving staff. She went into the kitchen, making her way all across the never-ending maze of counters and shelves until she found it: a small, battered wooden door, barely visible in the dark.

Contrary to her belief, it wasn't an exit.

Alex found herself in a huge, marble-like double staircase leading right into an inner courtyard. She cursed under her breath as she glued her back to the nearest wall. She moved slowly, carefully watching her step as she walked down the stairs as closer to the railing as possible. Then she ran towards the wall, the very limit of her freedom, but since it was covered by a magnificent vine in bloom she had to use her hands to grope for any possible doors hidden behind the flora. The incomparable sound of a metallic doorknob clicking against her fingers was enough to make her smile. She removed the vine from the small, hidden gate and, using all of her strength, managed to open it slightly, her body stretching and writhing in order to fit into the small gap of liberty calling her on.

At the other side of the door, she found several trash bins and a bunch of Outworlders rummaging through the royalty's discarded treasures. She lowered her head and ran as fast as she could, the city nightscape concealing her figure in the dark.

* * *

His mother's death; followed by Annie's untimely demise and Amanda's disappearance marked the end of his life as he knew it. He was captured, tortured and forced to become the kind of man he had always despised. His blood grew colder with each passing day; the effects of war and captivity plus the ineffable turmoil of those days acted like an eraser in his mind, detaching him from that tender sense of humanity that had defined him before. An innocent child no more, he began to walk down that almost imperceptible line separating those who care from those who don't.

Until he escaped.

He became a mercenary, an outlaw that had been reduced to only being a gun for hire. Those dreams and expectations he had experienced before never truly left him but he somehow managed to keep them to himself in order to stay out of trouble, delimitating his existence to a vacuum where no one was welcomed to stay. More sooner than later he was the right man for the right job, the one at the right time, at the right place. Neither more nepotism nor chauvinism would ever pollute his speeches again: he was a silent gun ready to fire in the name of the highest bidder.

Then the sorcerer came along and there really wasn't much left to consider – time began a mantle of oblivion, a measure to help him calculate all sorts of distances.

" _A prisoner escaped!"_

" _Quick! Establish a security perimeter!"_

Black raised one of his eyebrows and listened as the guards began to run in the courtyard right below his chamber. He grabbed the pack of smokes he still had in his pocket and picked a cigarette, balancing it between two fingers before lighting it. He scratched his chin as he sat down on his bed, his naked torso exposing that original cut that had started it all.

He lowered his head briefly, his gaze wandering before him; traveling from the soft, Brunswick green rug underneath his feet to his own hands then he exhaled, light grey smoke engulfing what seemed to be a somewhat obscured half smile.

There was no use in hiding from the undeniable.

Deep down he had always known that by the time Shang Tsung offered him that deal he was long gone – each meaningless kill would instantly become ammo for the next one. It was the rush, the thrill of neither the sense nor the need for faceless revenge, what truly drove him. That's when he stopped asking for names or motives – not because the exaggerated passing of the years carried an obvious dehumanization, no, he was already headed towards some dark place beyond redemption long before that happened. He knew; he was sure – that deal had only deepened what was already hollowed.

Otherwise, he would have never accepted what the sorcerer had to offer.

He was certain; if only he had had one person, just one person left to hold on to, it would have been impossible for him to accept – acceptance and compliance would have implied leaving that person behind sooner or later, getting them trapped deep within his memories, at the mercy of time and oblivion. That's why he took his chance: not because of the golden shimmer of eternal youth, not because of the possibility of becoming wealthier than ever, wiser than ever, better than ever, colder than ever – but because of the nothingness awaiting for him in any of his possible futures. After all, there was no true sacrifice to be made – everything he cared for had already been sacrificed beforehand. And there was no true need of letting go of anything either because he was already free from everything that could define him as a human being.

" _Search the city!"_

The sound of the alarm was music to his ears – the signal, loud, clear and evident, was indicating that a prisoner was on the run. He walked up to his balcony, his chamber dark – unlighted, then rested his tight fists on the railing and contemplated the view: guards were running and pacing back and forth indeed, their voices cruising in the night, their feet marching nervously as a muted concert of torches illuminated the courtyard – and it was all because of a tiny, battered young woman from Earthrealm who had managed to escape somehow.

It was a slap in the face of that time paradox he hated so much. Every time he had actually tried to do something good it had ended in misery and tragedy but this time, the only thing he had done was to simply leave a door unlocked.

He grinned, satisfied.

She was out. She had made it.


	7. Vultures

Interlude

Chapter VII

**Vultures**

* * *

  _"I was the only man alive who knew time had begun again."_

Angela Carter — The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

* * *

Chaos taking place all around him, the guard's eyes seemed to have somehow stopped time itself. He contemplated his surroundings in silence as if taking in the view; as if rejoicing his pupils with the most inadvertent of details.

It was quite the sight to see for M'horel, the guard leaning against the bars of the empty cell where Alex should have been - there they were, glowing mercilessly on the cot, the very same shiny, tiny, unevenly shaped golden coins that he himself had delivered to Erron Black earlier that night. He stepped into the cell and made his way to the cot; then he grabbed the coins, inspecting them briefly with his bemused gaze and placed them in his pocket before leaving the small redoubt.

As bewildering as that sight was, it wasn't enough to stop a belligerent half-smile from curling up his lips almost mechanically.

Outside the palace, the rest of the guards were working overtime trying to find the missing auburn-haired girl who was supposed to be executed the following day. He couldn't care less; he was certain his colleagues would never find her: it was Black's doing, of that he had no doubt.

What was he supposed to do next?

Bribing the mercenary was not even an option; he could already imagine the filthy Earthrealmer pulling the trigger and ending him instantaneously. He shook his head and walked out of the dungeon - those coins had surprisingly exposed a multicolored panoptic before his eyes, displaying a potential new beginning for the rebel-seekers and their crusade against those trying to take what was rightfully theirs.

He left the palace, taking advantage of the confusion caused by the disappearance of the young woman, and went to his parents' house – he needed young Pareedis, the smartest one in the family, to help him decide what to do with those golden coins traveling now in his pocket. Even from a considerable distance, M'horel was able to describe his younger brother's figure, sitting on the front porch as if waiting for him, as if anticipating the news he was about to hear.

"Our young lady is on the run, isn't she?" said Pareedis the minute he saw his older brother. The English accent contaminating his diction was clearly a mockery, resounding all around them.

M'horel nodded, as he reached for the coins in his pocket.

He sat down next to his brother and took off his skull mask – even though they were Outworlders born and raised, they both looked undeniably like Earthrealmers, their fine features were exposing their mother's genes; an Earthrealmer woman from England who had tragically passed trying to defend her family from a rioting mob during that short, dark period of time when Mileena was Kahnum.

"We should have received so much more than this -" reflected young Pareedis as he took the coins from his older brother's hand. "What happened?"

"The woman had them in her pocket, she claimed those coins were actually Black's. I delivered those coins to Black myself and went straight to the guards' chamber; my shift was over. Next thing I know, I hear guards running everywhere, the alarm was indicating a prisoner had escaped." He paused briefly, his gaze never leaving the coins. "I knew it was her, I was sure."

"So where did you get these?" Pareedis asked, the coins now resting on top of his right knee.

"The cot – in her cell."

Pareedis' eyes widened with surprise: Black was involved, he  _had_  to be. "You are telling me that Black went to see her and he let her go, on purpose?" The young man's eyes were demanding, he needed to hear it.

"Yes."

With a guffaw, the younger brother stood up and exclaimed: "I don't believe it!" then he turned around, all of a sudden, and faced M'horel: "and she just left the coins there, just like that," it was perfect and ridiculous at the same time.

"I don't know." The older brother replied softly, trying to remain calm. "Perhaps she forgot all about the coins and just left them there, maybe she didn't notice – but perhaps she left them there on purpose, I'm not sure, maybe she was trying to connect her disappearance with Black's intervention." As soon as those words escaped from his lips M'horel shook his head, finding it hard to believe. The truth seemed obvious: both Black and the woman had made stupid mistakes that could condemn them if the brothers played their cards right.

"I should talk to the Emperor," M'horel pondered out loud. Perhaps that was it; he should just talk to Kotal Kahn himself and expose both Black and the woman. The mercenary was a resourceful, tricky man but deep down M'horel knew he had enough evidence to bring them down.

Pareedis shook his head pensively.

"No, not yet."

The younger brother sat down on the porch again; his gaze was lost in the horizon as if trying to draw an invisible map with his eyes. "We need them both. Just one of them won't do," he began, "and the woman… I wouldn't take her for granted. Remember those men who went to her house the night we decided to deliver Black to the emperor – they never returned." His tone was serious and dark, revealing the tactician in him.

M'horel listened in silence, then he picked up the coins that had fallen to the ground with his brother's unexpected, sarcastic outburst.

"I'll follow Black –” Pareedis said, determined. "He has his own agenda, we already know that: remember that they found him bleeding to death near the Lei Chen Mountains when he was supposed to be in the Kuatan Jungle. If he helped her escape that means she's now part of that agenda as well. He'll lead us straight to her - and we'll finally find out what the man is truly up to."

M'horel nodded and stood up slowly, taking only one of the coins with him before putting on his skull mask again. Then the man started to walk his way back to the palace, his colleagues were still searching the city, knocking on every door, trying to find Alex. He smirked disdainfully under his mask – for once in their lives, the stars had finally aligned. The constellation placed before his eyes was magnificent and perfect – ridiculously perfect.


	8. The Shape of Things to Come

Arc II

Chapter VIII

  **The Shape of Things to Come**

* * *

Even though she was dehydrated, her lips were swollen due to the sudden changes of extrapolated weathers and temperatures she had been exposed to, her feet were covered by a colorful collection of the most diverse infected blisters, the mosquitoes had chewed on her skin over and over again, she hadn't had a proper meal in over a fortnight and her own smell was enough to make her nauseous, Alex couldn't help but smile at the sight she had been waiting to see for so long.

Ever since running away from that filthy dungeon she had felt like each step was pushing her further away from her true home, leading her into the unknown.

The journey from the palace to the southwest region of the realm had been long and challenging – she had had to steal, hide, run, lie and then run again in order to get there. She had seen the two juxtaposed faces of Outworld – the monumental cities and landscapes and also the most desolated, devastated corners of its vast territories. The resemblance was uncanny: perhaps this foreign realm and her own world were not that different after all: she had found nobleness in places that had been clearly held back by the different emperors and by time itself and she had found suspicion and intrigue in the most privileged zones and so she had found herself in moments of deep tribulation, reflecting, during her brief stops along the way, that neither here nor there, nothing was exactly as it appeared to be.

The temple, surfacing now in front of her tired eyes was magnificent, even from the distance. Perhaps that was Black's true offer: sanctuary. The mercenary was never going to help her get back home yet he had provided her with some security after all. Suddenly the never-ending journey from the palace to the Lei Chen Mountains region was worth all the risk and the desperation. The view from the mountainside was spectacular: not only it was a temple; it was a fort. The walled city of Lei Chen was the safest place she was going to find in Outworld – the feeling was overwhelming: entering its walls was accepting that she would never return home; that that place was going to be  _her_  place from that moment on.

She approached the gates with eyes full of tears, as if saying a silent goodbye to everyone she had ever loved back in Earthrealm, placed her hands against the cold structure and closed her eyes, trying to find the little strength she had left in her body to knock on the door and finally find out what was there, waiting for her, on the other side.

"You must be Alexandra."

She opened her eyes the second she heard the boy calling out her name. He was standing just two feet away from her. Confused, she took a good look at him: he was barely a teenager but he was significantly taller than her. His skin was olive and he had deep, dark brown eyes.

"Hello. I'm Aalem, I was waiting for you. Mr. Black told me there was a fair chance you'd be joining me," the young boy introduced himself quietly.

"You can call me Alex," she suggested, grinning shyly at him.

"I’m afraid we're not yet acquainted," Aalem corrected her as soon as her words had abandoned her mouth.

An awkward silence reigned over them for a few moments; then the young boy's lips curled up slightly and he smiled at Alex.

"Are you going to introduce me to the rest of the villagers? Are you my guide or something?" she asked him as soon as she noticed that the initial tension that had encompassed them was finally melting away.

"No…" Aalem replied softly as if he was embarrassed by her naiveté. "We're not entering Lei Chen." He blushed as her incredulous eyes raced to meet his. The boy crossed his arms over his chest as he regained his composure; his feet were balancing back and fro, his brown tunic kissing the ground from time to time. "I've been waiting for you, here, for quite some time. He knew you'd come here."

Alex rolled her eyes in disbelief: the agenda was evident.

"So when he said Lei Chen Mountains, he wasn't being literal. Was he?"

Aalem shook his head.

_Damn you, Black._

"Come with me, I'll show you the way." He finally managed to say, still visibly ashamed by Alex's misinterpretation of Black's words.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, Aalem guiding her steps away from the temple and into the wilderness of the mountains. The naked land in front of her was burying all possible pre-conceived ideas she had cooked inside her mind. There was no sanctuary; Black's actions were far from being altruistic. After a while they arrived at the lost cabin, almost facing the bay at the other side of the mountain range.

"What is it that you do here? Do you work for him?" A still bewildered Alex asked the boy as she slowly turned around, absorbing the landscape. The boy didn't answer. He produced an old, rusty key from his tunic and opened the door of that Godforsaken place she was supposed to live in from that moment on.

The cabin was small but it looked surprisingly cozy at first sight, with fine, delicate rugs covering the floors and just a few rustic decorations scattered here and there. The main room had two large shelves placed against one of the lateral walls and a big, rectangular wooden table placed in the center – resting carelessly upon the table were a handful of recently-sharpened pencils, several small boxes with the word "ammo" handwritten on one of their sides, an oil lamp, four unlighted torches, a glass bottle filled with what seemed to be water, a couple of dirty glasses and an open scratch pad. Her gaze wandered around her surroundings until it stopped in the pages of the open book. Displayed right in front of her eyes, a graphic - it was like a timetable, with dates and times divided into little boxes. Most of the boxes had been filled with the words "no sightings."

Aalem rushed forwards her and closed the scratch pad as soon as he noticed her curious eyes wandering through the exposed pages, his expression serious – she was clearly edging too close to the truth.

"What is he up to?" she demanded.

"Mr. Black doesn't want me to tell you. At least not until your tail is gone," his gaze was harder now, a palpable distance was set between them; rarefying the atmosphere.

"What tail?" The sense of false security broadcasted by his words was making her nervous.

"The man hiding by the mountainside," Aalem explained solemnly as his index finger pointed at the window.

"Was I followed?" Alex's eyes widened in fear.

"No. Mr. Black was. But the man is still nearby. I assumed he was waiting for you to arrive." The young boy clarified. "You were an easy target for him; if he hasn't attacked you by now I guess he’s going to wait for Mr. Black to return. He must be looking for the two of you – together." Aalem moved nearer as if trying to kill the tacit distance between them. "You'll be staying here with me; Mr. Black will come by periodically to check on us – and  _her_."

Alex felt tempted to ask the boy about that  _her_ beginning to unleash her curiosity but she refrained from doing so: she could see the boy was cautious, he would not reveal a single detail until his precious Mr. Black would say he was allowed to. She scanned him with her avid eyes: if he was determined not to give her any answers she would have to change her questions:

"You are too young to be so subdued by the orders of a man that's not even here. How old are you, fourteen, fifteen maybe?" Her tone was full of surliness and disapproval.

"I'm Edenian." The boy replied calmly.

"That's not a number."

"That's all you need to know," an obscured smile was curling up his lips but Alex remained as cold and distant as she was – his counterfeit smile was not enough to fool her.

"So he brought me here to keep me in the dark. How clever," an ironic smile set on her face.

"He didn't bring you here," Aalem corrected her – his expression indolent, "you came here all by yourself. As a matter of fact, Mr. Black wasn't entirely sure you'd come at all." The tone of his voice was irksome to her ears.

"He didn't give me much of a choice," she retorted.

"Of course he did. You could have gone everywhere yet you chose to follow his advice," the young boy was gradually starting to annoy her. "He never ordered you to go southwest, he simply suggested a location. Everything you did after he left has been completely up to you." Aalem finished as he offered her a glass of water.

"I wouldn't use the word 'advice' so freely," Alex spat under her breath as she took the glass from his hand. The boy stared at her as she drank the water, a look full of reprobation set on his face.

"I don't really understand what are you complaining about – Mr. Black freed you, then provided you with a safe place, a roof above your head, a purpose and even a companion," the boy was fervently trying to defend Black but his words were only sharpening her curiosity.

"What purpose?"

"Mr. Black said you traded services, as a medical doctor, if I recall correctly."

"I didn't trade anything," she was starting to feel aggravated by the young boy's sense of superiority.

"I'm not the one you should be discussing your contractual situation with," he shrugged, oblivious to her reaction.

"There is no contract," she replied harshly. It was true that she had offered him her help as a doctor but those words had been her plea; she knew he would never accept her help – and also she had only suggested that he could use her medical expertise in case he ever needed it again but he had not accepted it – at least not verbally.

"That's odd…" Aalem seemed to reflect, pensively. "We are his employees, and we're on a mission."

"He's not paying me." Alex retorted.

"Maybe you made a deal different than mine; but as far as I can see your job is way more important than mine," Aalem said, "you see, I may get to tell him what happened – the things I saw and the things I didn't, but you… you get to keep him alive," the boy explained.

"So we're like, part of a team?" Alex asked, suddenly confused.

"No, he works alone," Aalem answered quickly.

Alex placed the empty glass on the wooden table, her incredulous eyes never leaving his. The boy shrugged once more, then grinned softly, as if finally relaxing. "As long as you stay here with us, Mr. Black will take care of everything. Food, water, clothing, weaponry and ammunition, you should make your list," he told her as he approached the table. Alex's eyes were exposing confusion again, so he decided to help her: "Medical supplies, I guess." He offered her a pencil and a sheet of paper.

"Does he come here often?" She asked just as she was about to start writing.

"Once a week, usually. He never stays for more than two days; he's needed at the palace." His words, no matter how kind or innocent, were not enough to hide the fact that Black couldn't stay longer because no one in the palace knew that that cabin lost in the mountains even existed.

Alex began to write down the items on her list, alcohol and clean bandages being her first choices when Aalem's voice interrupted her.

"He built this place himself, you know."

She stopped writing yet her eyes remained fixed on the paper resting on the table. Aalem was trying his best to make Black's dark figure bearable for her, his words getting too close to that infamous frontier separating praise from propaganda.

"He's quite handy, I see," She replied indifferently.

The boy snorted, "he told me you could be exasperating," his calm eyes found hers: "but he also said you were good at what you do."

The poor boy was trying to be reassuring. Annoying, boastful and pretentious as he was, he was actually trying to make her feel better. She breathed out, then turned to finally face him.

"How long have you been here?" Alex asked - he looked so young it was hard to believe that he could have been accompanying the mercenary for long.

"Almost a year. I thought my job here was done after their last confrontation." He was pensive but his words were awakening her curiosity once again.

"You mean when he got hurt?" Alex asked the boy, leaving the pencil aside now, "why didn't you help him?" She was not reproaching him; she was merely trying to understand.

"He doesn't want me to interfere," Aalem replied bluntly as he sat on the floor, his back leaned against the wall.

"The rebel-seekers took him," Alex told him.

"There was nothing I could do."

Alex walked over to him and sat down on the floor by his side. If she was going to spend her days with that kid she would have to choose her words more carefully. She cocked an eyebrow then smiled at him – she was not trying to be condescending; she was simply trying to build a solid, stable bridge between them.

"I'm not a healer, I'm not a doctor. That will be your responsibility in case she hurts him again," the boy spoke tenderly.

"How long have you been working with him?"

"You mean for him," the boy corrected her.

"No, I meant _with_ him," she insisted.

" _For_ him," Aalem corrected her once more, "I'm second generation. My father preceded me. He met Mr. Black when he first came to Outworld; I've known him ever since I was born. He's tough, but he's not entirely a bad person," those words echoed deep within Alex: to her surprise, she could say she agreed to that.

Aalem stood up, visibly trying to make himself busy as an attempt to drift away from all those sad, unpleasant memories about his father.

"What will we do here, all day?" Alex asked him, trying to help him. The boy turned around, his expression resolute.

"I have a duty – I go to my assigned location and wait, then register any possible sightings. You, I don't know. Don't be a bother, I assume," Alex tilted her head at those final words – she was the adult, she could surely find a way to handle things as smoothly as possible.

She stood up and placed her right hand on the boy's left shoulder. Aalem looked her in the eyes, his face serious as if affected by her tender gesture.

"There's one more thing you need to understand – we are not his protégés," he warned her, "we are here because he needs to be at the palace most of the time. If he was free from his duties he would be the one here; not us."

He grabbed her by the hand, longing to break the renewed tension, "let me show you your room."

"I don't think I'll be able to sleep – not now that I know someone is lurking out there," Alex let out as she remembered the stranger hiding in the mountains. She felt shivers running down her spine as goosebumps started to shake her to her very core: no matter how much she hated the idea of having Black around, she tacitly accepted the fact that having him near could make her feel safer. Reconciling with the idea of feeling comfortable around the man would be a whole other matter but acknowledging his skills and his cold-blooded senses were the only certainties she had.

"It's not us they want. Not me anyway. He's waiting for Black – and you." The tone of his voice was so calm and relaxed she found it utterly unsettling. In case of an attack, Aalem wouldn't help them; he would simply remain a witness, a privileged spectator watching the gloomy scene playing before his eyes.

"This is Black's room, isn't it?" Alex asked the second they set foot on that bedroom. Even though it was a small, neat room with just a bed, a chair, a petite wardrobe, and a little wooden bedside table, there was a certain Old West vibe to it.

"It's the only room in the cabin," Aalem explained.

"Where will you sleep?" Alex asked as she sat down on the bed. It was the first time in weeks she was feeling the softness of a decent mattress.

"I don't think I will," the boy chuckled, "problem will be when he's around. One room for three people - I can sleep on the floor but you…"

"I can sleep on the floor as well so don't worry; your majesty can have his bed," she interrupted the boy.

"Unless he invites you to it," the boy's eyes sparkled suddenly. He moved closer and lowered his voice even though it was only the two of them in the bedroom: "He told me you tried to seduce him. I assured him your filtration would not work with me either. I don't really find Earthrealmers to be attractive," his confession was both ridiculous and exasperating, "but I don’t have to worry, and neither do you - he said I look too much like a child anyway, that I'd be safe from you," the boy went on.

_Damn you, Black._

Alex gave him a puzzled look but it wasn't enough to make him stop.

"He also mentioned that it makes you feel empowered. The flirting."

Alex could feel the warmth in her cheekbones making her blush. What kind of man reveals such private details?

"It doesn't." She replied angrily. "And I'm not interested in visiting his bed if he's in it."

"Good for you," the boy added, "You’re not his type anyway. I've seen them all, back in the palace."

Alex covered her face with her hands, "I'm really not interested in hearing that sort of details." She was practically begging Aalem to stop – she was not interested in hearing stories about the cowboy's private affairs, the only thing she was positively interested in was in slapping his face as hard as possible.

"Just saying, your hair – he specifically dislikes red-haired women," Aalem proceeded, blushing slightly.

"Good to know." She tried to cut him off bitterly but the boy was not remotely finished yet.

"Thinking it over, maybe his hatred towards red-haired women has something to do with _her_ , she’s red-haired as well, as you, but he has never asked for one while I worked in the palace and I remember, one night, the woman he had requested was indisposed so they sent a replacement; a red-hair. I've never seen him so disgusted…

"Requested?" Alex asked, surprised by Aalem's wording. If he was trying to imply that Black was a recurring consumer of prostitution he could have saved the details, she thought – yet, the revelation forced her to go on. "You mean, like, from a catalog?" Her eyes shuttered instantaneously at the thought of Black choosing women in such a cold-hearted fashion. Even though she had already realized and posteriorly concluded that the man was as far from commitment as humanly possible she still found that image disgusting.

"It's not a catalog, that's for sure. The guards and especially the enforcers can choose their escorts. There are women in the palace whose sole purpose is to satisfy them. These women have a specific person that arranges the meetings and the payments. It's quite simple actually," Aalem explained as Alex rolled her eyes.

"A pimp. They have a pimp in the palace," she was positive Aalem would not understand her, no matter how hard he tried yet she didn't care. The boy gave her a puzzled look then shrugged, helpless.

"Wait here." said the boy as he left the room. He was back in a few minutes, a bag in his hand.

"Tomorrow, first thing in the morning you'll wash and put these clothes on. We don't know when Mr. Black will be here, but you have to be presentable," he informed her as he handed her the bag, "he said you looked like a beggar but he was quite certain you still look like a woman underneath all the grime covering you,"

_Damn you, Black._

Alex breathed out loudly, visibly annoyed with the conversation. The boy noticed her gaze hardening as she threw the bag over the bed without even taking a look at the clothes inside it.

"His wounds are healing just fine, but you'll be checking them as soon as he arrives," his tone was more amicable now; he was clearly trying to change the subject.

"Now I feel like I should check him for every venereal disease," her remark was ironic and bitter yet she had somehow meant those words that had propelled from her mouth. Aalem had provided her with information she wished she hadn't heard; now it was her turn to make him feel uncomfortable.

Aalem's gaze hardened as if punishing her audacity.

"Don't be rude or judgmental – he doesn't like that," Alex rolled her eyes bluntly at the unwelcomed remark. Aalem went on, visibly tired of her attitude towards his employer: "the fact that Mr. Black is familiarized with the world of brothels and prostitution doesn't make him less cautious. In fact, he's a very healthy man because he takes really good care of himself," he stopped, his eyes finding her bemused smile. "And now he also has you for further medical advice. So if you consider, at some point, that Mr. Black needs to be checked for any possible venereal diseases, go ahead," the irony broadcasted in both, his look and the tone of his voice were daring, "I'd like to see you try," the young man concluded; a victorious grin full of satisfaction set on his face.

Alex crossed her arms over her chest – if the boy was having a hard time trying to successfully change the topic of their conversation she would gladly do it for him.

"There's one thing I still don't understand," she began, "from a medical point of view, I still can't figure out how his body works. His bones and his muscles, I can imagine. His bones must contain an obscene amount of calcium and his muscles are far from becoming atrophied because of his perpetual physical activity. But his organs – his lungs, his stomach, his liver – even his skin, his teeth, his eyes… how come there's no deterioration?" She inquired the boy, even though she knew the only person that could possibly answer such questions was Black himself.

"Don't try to comprehend things that are simply too great for your mind to assimilate," Aalem said to her as traces of superiority were contaminating his voice once again. "What I fail to understand is why he needs you. If he needs a doctor that means he knows there's a fair chance he'll fail. That's very unlike him," the boy seemed to reflect as he started to leave. Her voice made him turn, however, as an idea set on her mind: perhaps she wouldn't have to abandon all hope just yet.

"You said Black told you I would come here. How? How do you communicate?"

"We don't –" Aalem answered simply. "He was here last week. I  _know_  the whole story. He mentioned you wanted him to get you back home. I humbly suggest you abandon such unfounded fantasies: he never will."

His words were quieting all the voices she had inside her head.

"Do you have any more questions?" he asked.

"About a thousand," her voice was almost inaudible now yet her words had reached his ears nonetheless.

The young man shook his head briefly, his gaze consumed by a profound gesture of tribulation.

"Wrong answer," he said after some moments in silence then leaned on the doorway, his features still engulfed by that same pensive trance he was clearly experiencing. His gaze hardened, his vision was now obscured, darkened - "The only question that should be bothering you is what possible future awaits for us both once he captures  _her_. Imagine this: he finally captures her, delivers her to the emperor. People are chanting his name as he walks; triumphal and victorious - they praise him for his brave, noble actions. Behind closed curtains he cashes in the big, juicy reward, even gets a promotion, maybe – What happens with  _us_  then? Once we cease to have a purpose - once he doesn't need us anymore. Now  _that_  should keep you up all night."


	9. (Mind the) Gap - Four Houses

Arc II

Chapter IX

**(Mind the) Gap - Four Houses**

* * *

  _"She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."_

Haruki Murakami — Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

* * *

It had been eighteen days.

Eighteen goddamned days of just sitting around and simply doing nothing. Eighteen days of waiting for him, filled with lost, dead, empty hours.

Eighteen days - she had counted them, each and every single one of them – as she sat by the window every single night, all alone, worrying about the kid out there in the mountains; her brain anesthetized yet working overtime, saving all of her poisonous thoughts for the mercenary, fueled by his labyrinthine ways.

_Knock, silence. Knock, knock, silence._

_Knock, silence._

_Knock, silence, knock._

Aalem had taught her that sequence composed by sounds and silences, it was the safe code she would wait every night to finally let the young boy in after a long day in the mountains – Alex walked to the door, hoping to find the Edenian kid on the other side but to her surprise, the only thing she saw was a large brown sack being thrown at her. Black, at last, was making an appearance.

She stepped back, the weight of her body completely unbalanced now, and the mercenary walked in – he delighted his eyes with the sight of her body struggling with the large bag filled with all the groceries he had brought for them, then he finally reached out his hands to help her, grinning unceasingly under his bandana.

As soon as her digits were free from the elaborated task they had been given, Alex slapped the cowboy – the palm of her hand turning red almost immediately, "how dare you?" she demanded, infuriated, finally channeling her contained anger towards the proper target.

The Edenian young man had been stationed in his surveillance spot in the mountains all day – now that the cold night had fallen upon the southwest region of the realm Black and the woman were alone, finally facing their own demons as they stood statically and awkwardly just a few steps away from each other; witnessing the cold chills running down their spines, making their eyes shiver and tremble, embedding them in a silent, almost deafening tension. An unbearable silence surrounded them – a crystal-like, immaculate silence, fragile and obsolete, for them to have and to hold, even if only briefly.

His face was completely shaken by her actions – his neck, driven by the inertia, acting as a gun recoiling after being fired, was slowly returning to its original position. His gaze, darkened and menacing was enough to make her see that he was upset.

"Congratulations on actually slapping me," Black snapped back quickly, the irony in his voice was unmistakable, the coldness and the indifference embedded in his tone were nearly annihilating her. "I remember the first time you tried to slap me in the face - you failed miserably," he added as he held her wrist firmly, his fingers almost buried in her skin, "I warn you, though, there won't be a third time."

Altered by his attitude, trying to get herself free from his tight grip, the woman continued:

"How dare you tell the boy all those things about me? You don't even know me; you don't know who I am!" an intensely enraged Alex shouted as Black walked in and closed the door behind him, finally releasing her.

"Quiet now, woman," his left hand, though airborne, was not threatening her - at least, not physically – it was firm, immobile; it was merely a beacon signaling her to be wise enough not to cross another line.

He moved near her, her silhouette shrinking under his menacing gaze – but his eyes gradually softened, as if welcoming the woman into his private musings and reveries – his opinion, finally undisclosed:

"Alexandra, you're the woman here," with his baritone voice tantalizing the part of her still terrified by his sole presence, Black's elocution was simple yet complex at the same time, as if trying to reveal the obvious. "What I want from you, as a woman, is to make dinner – not a scene," one of his eyebrows, mockingly demoting her to a more basic state, "and to please, be quiet," his experienced hand caressed her right cheekbone, her whole body reacting to his unwanted touch, "you look prettier when you're silent."

Alex rolled her eyes, visibly tired of his dominant, sexist attitude towards her and angrily removed Black's hand from her face – her defiant look penetrating his domains.

"If you don't like it in here you can leave anytime you want," the mercenary suggested as he observed the raging woman, "I'm sure one of your many, many, many friends will be eager to help you."

"You're not helping me," she retorted, her arms now irrevocably crossed against her chest. With one more step, Black finally killed the distance separating their bodies, his threatening eyes fragmenting her convictions one by one.

"Agree to disagree."

He stepped away from her, satisfied with his victory. He took off his hat and his bandana and discarded them carelessly on the wooden table as his fingers traveled across the yellowish pages displayed in front of him – the words "no sightings" were written in the majority of the boxes with only two exceptions reading: "man by the mountainside" and "sighting."

"I still don't know what is it that we're doing here." Alex's voice brought him back but only momentarily.

"You don't need to know – that's not what you're here for," Black answered with his eyes still fixed on Aalem's records. Turning the page, he found a message from the boy:

" _She's annoying, indeed."_

Black chuckled, a timid smile curling up his lips. He grabbed one of the pencils resting on the table and wrote the words:  _"She's trying"_  right under Aalem's handwriting then closed the scratch pad and turned around to face her – for the first time since meeting that woman his expression was genuinely serene. He was older than time, wiser than time – he had been expecting that slap colliding against his face, he deserved it, he knew.

"I see you found his message," Alex said as she grinned back at Black, "he's quite bossy… But I guess he's alright," she added sheepishly as she tucked her auburn hair behind her ears – the man was intimidating indeed, but making the best out of her situation was completely up to her, she knew. She moved nearer, then said: "Aalem said I was supposed to check your wound but it's been so long I don't really see the point."

Black nodded in silence, his laceration was completely healed. He sat on the table, leaving the scratch pad and the pencil aside.

"That kid is like having a pebble in my shoe," he finally said as his eyes reached hers. "But it's a good pebble; he's a good boy." He was being friendlier now – for the first time, he was finally confiding in her. "He means well."

Alex ran her hand through her own hair as she sat down on the table, right next to Black – the redness tainting the palm revealing that her hand was still sore from slapping him. Black smiled at the sight, partially satisfied that his cheek was not the only thing still feeling the repercussions from her outburst.

"Aalem used to work with me back in the palace. I knew his father, he was a good friend, my best friend," Black confessed, as his mind began to drift away. His eyes, unfocused, were slowly starting to abandon the woman sitting there by his side.

_Friend -_

_When was the last time you actually had one of those, Black?_

"Then why would you leave the boy all alone out there when you know there's someone lurking in the dark? I thought you would be the one out in the open."

"The man's gone," he began – his façade once again expressionless, untouched by her concern. "And Aalem - he's not a child." With those words he stood up and went to his chamber, his weary bones unable to conceal the tiredness invading his body. Alex sighed, as she realized that that brief instant of comradeship had been left behind. Much to her regret, she had no choice but to admit that  _that_  Black wasn't all that bad.

After a few seconds in silence, she heard his footsteps approaching the door of his chamber once again – he stopped, resting one of his hands on the door frame then he looked down and said:

"My bed – it smells like you."

His naked torso was barely visible from where she was standing. Alex smiled timidly at him, her voice lower than before:

"To tell you the truth, I thought you would let me use your bed, thought you’d try to be more like… a gentleman," her confession made her blush slightly as she stood alone in the room; her back leaned against one of the shelves.

"I don't want to set a precedent," he said softly as he retreated to his bedchamber.

* * *

A voiceless mother is singing on stage, the saloon explodes as patrons and girls dance and raise their glasses – the night is young and a mercenary stands in the center of the action. Men are fighting around him, possibly because of all the booze running freely through their systems; their fists airborne, their arms swinging before him. A hand grabs him by the shoulder,

"I hope you still remember how to dance," she says – Jessica, the owner of his long-lost virginity is leading him, she grabs his hands and places them around her waist, then moves so slowly, so emotively, it's almost disrespectful not to comply.

_But I never was a dancer, ever._

A mercenary is dancing tonight. His movements, so clumsy and torpid, are collapsing shamelessly with her swift parsimony; the woman knows him like the back of her hand – she grins, now notoriously enticed by his awkwardness: they both know how this will end. She smirks, she laughs, she's light – the red ribbon of her passionate loving is inviting him tonight – but there are no more lessons to be learned and so he moves near her, his fingers traveling the softness of her skin – after more than a century, now he's finally in position of teaching  _her_  things she has yet to know. They dance, as the rising spirits in the saloon are overwhelming: they surround him, they contain him, they go through him, they call out his name as he glances at his mother once more, still voiceless, still unable to hear that sound he loves so much. A shadow moves around the crowd –

_Is it you?_

Jessica stops dancing and her eyes turn black – her expression has changed, something is bothering her. The music stops, the girls scream as the patrons stand petrified.

_Where's Jessica? Where has she gone?_

A weeping lady enters the saloon; she seems hurt, wounded. Her hair is wet but her dress is charred – her skin, scorched and burnt, finds him as she reaches out her hand to touch him. A mercenary chokes on regret tonight, as Annie covers her face with her own damaged hands, those beloved hands.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, static and torn apart by her sole presence. His own mother is eyeing him from the stage – does she even recognize her own child in that man standing in the center of the saloon?

"No, you're not," Annie says, unable to stop the tears streaming down her consumed visage.

_I am._

_I truly am._

The look on his mother's face is judging him – his own heart is struggling, fighting the moment.

"Go now, find her," Annie yells as the shadow moves around the frozen crowd once more. The mercenary glances at Annie, as her cold and distant eyes pierce through his skin.

"I should have stayed."

A mercenary feels like crying tonight, as his mother's eyes diminish him – even though he's more than one hundred and fifty years old he feels like a child again, like a helpless, vulnerable and anguished child lost in the faceless crowd.

"Let's go, Erron," she says, as she grabs him by his arm with a tenderness that once was his own. Amanda, never Mandy, is also there. She holds Erron's arm but it's not really his arm, it's  _another_  Erron's arm. He looks exactly like him, and moves exactly like him, and loves her exactly like he himself does but it's not him; it's another version of him, a happier version of him – a foreign version of himself stealing his own private happy ending.

_A soldier?_

Suddenly that feeling of betrayal he had felt so long ago seems to vanish: perhaps she didn't fall for someone else after all, maybe she was only his, forever and always, constant and elliptic, like time itself. He frowns, perplexed, as the women of his life surround him – he's hollowed, as he realizes how alone he actually is – his mother's voice is a treasure he has yet to find, Jessica's touch – buried under a black mass of caresses and cravings accumulated in more than a century by his pirate heart, suddenly seems vain, unreachable. Annie still represents the cruel misery conditioning his whole existence and Amanda – he closes his eyes, as an unbearable feeling of loneliness invades him.

He should have stayed – for Amanda, for Annie.

But Amanda, he knows, he's sure: they should have seen the world together.

The crowd disappears and now they are alone – Jessica, Annie, and Amanda surround him; they reach out and touch him - theirs are compelling hands, he knows. Every inch of his skin, summoned by their digits, is longing to belong in their circumstantial kind of faith, they are recruiting in him a true believer; corrupted and intoxicated by their fragmented faith, a faith that would take control of his senses, transforming him into some sort of blind prayer and spreading his shattered pieces all over the place. Each tattooed moan their hands would imprint in his pores would later translate itself into an award ribbon – the collected souvenirs of their existence upon his; the treasured heirlooms he's fairly won and gently gathered all over the years.

Once again he's theirs and they are his, and the sole notion of their resurrected mutual feelings is enough to make him feel that the world is a better place now.

With fistfuls of them and their clothes, he tries to drag them closer to his skin – to his soulless skin. Oh god, he knows - their fingers truly are something to be burnt by.

Among their faces, a shadowed figure watches the scene in silence and finally approaches the gathering – her mischievous smile is inviting, enticing, until the light unveils her features and the image is now clear – reborn from the confines of his darkest desires.

_Is it you?_

_Why?_

_Why you?_

"When was the last time you've been with an Earthrealmer?" she asks and his face is now pale, his mind paused, engrossed by confusion and despair. His three ladies look at the stranger, then back at him – the unisonous sound of their laughter is carelessly caressing his ears.

He closes his eyes, strained and consumed by a profound feeling of unworthiness.

"They are long gone," he hears his own voice saying, but he's not the one speaking – it's that other version of him, his duplicate, the man he had seen holding Amanda's arm. The mercenary looks at him in the eye: he's clearly older than he is, the paradox unfolding – the older man is actually the younger one and the younger one, the more jovial one, is the embodiment of time itself.

_You,_

_You – the one that never even existed: you stole my happy ending._

* * *

The image, disturbing and lethal, was enough to wake him from his slumber – his body covered in cold sweat, his hands shaking, his very core completely altered. He stood on his bedroom's doorstep and he gazed at her – her, that corrupting specter awakening his old ghosts. That damn woman now asleep on the cabin's cold floor had unburied all those faces somehow, all those memories he had fought for so long. Her presence, bewildering yet pristine, was an evocation in itself.

He wished he could just deconstruct her; just tear her apart with his bare hands. Turn her into fragments, each little piece of flesh and bone consumed by each one of those haunting memories – then he would bury her, and all of her pieces; her scattered existence forever obliterated from his life, never to resurface again – never to be found again.

He cocked his revolver and aimed for her head – it would be fast; it would be simple. His fingers, though shaking, were about to make a statement.

_One_

His free hand came to rest on the door frame, his nerves a wholeness now creating a tight fist – he swallowed, his chest exalted by his uneven breathing as she turned and tossed in her sleep.

_Two_

She, that Shangri-La for his long-lost loved ones was holding the reason why those dreams had suddenly reappeared after entire eras: she wanted a home; the same home he himself had never had; the same home he would never get to share with Amanda, the same home Annie had tried to build around him.

The first house had never even existed.

The second house had its windows bricked up.

The third house had burnt to the ground.

The fourth house was simply impossible. It would never happen.

The woman turned and tossed in her sleep once again, was she dreaming about that home? The home she wanted back in so desperately – she wanted a home; a home that was too late, a home he could not provide.


	10. The Self Tormentor – Evidence on Things Unseen

Arc II

Chapter X

* * *

  **Part I**

**The Self Tormentor**

* * *

  _"I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling."_

Haruki Murakami — Sputnik Sweetheart

* * *

_Three._

The bullet, propelled by much more than just his finger caressing the cold trigger, was aimed for her head and it would have ended her certainly, hadn't it been for the woman's own nightmares, making her slumber uneasy and convulsed. She turned in her sleep once more, just in time, so the bullet only scratched the back of her right shoulder – the sound of the weapon being fired, followed by the burning sensation of metal carelessly kissing her skin was enough to wake her though.

Their reactions were mirrored in simultaneity, but they differed in every other possible aspect: Black, with his legs now stiffened, was pinned to the ground, completely unable to move. He had finally done it, he had pulled the trigger – she should be dead, only a mere coincidence had saved the woman, he knew. Yet it was true: he had aimed for her head and he had pulled the trigger. Not because she had slapped him, not because there was no use in keeping her around much longer, not because the woman was exasperating – but because he found in her sole presence the reason why his most repressed demons had resurfaced: deep down he knew that they wouldn't disappear by ending Alex yet, in his mind, killing her was the closest approximation to actually doing something about it. You can't kill a ghost, you can't shoot a memory but perhaps it is possible to drown those spirits in brand new blood, like a deadly baptism of some sort. The woman, now definitely awakened and with her blue eyes wide opened, was staring at Black in disbelief: he had pulled the trigger; he had intended to kill her. She moved back quickly and, painful as it was, glued her back to the nearest wall, facing the motionless mercenary. Her eyes, fixed on his, were showing some of the darkest shades of terror and horror he had ever seen – had she been sleeping peacefully, he would have succeeded. She flexed her legs and pressed her knees against her chest. Her whole body was shaking so she locked her arms around her legs but the shock was simply too much to stay quiet and so her hands were showing that tension was nullifying her existence, her fingers were shivering nervously, as the first drops of blood started to stream down the side of her arm.

The few moments they stayed like that felt like an eternity for both of them. The impenetrable wall of silence enveloping them was creating a rhythm of its own, playing the tune of their altered heartbeats as a sickening echo traveling from her body to his body. His gaze caught sight of the red ribbons cascading down her right arm and tried to move – his brain ordered his legs to walk and reach for her but it was impossible: all communications had been disabled in his system, he was static, the commotion of the situation was simply too much to handle. He dropped his gun to the ground feeling like an amateur who had just fired a weapon for the first time and now had to deal with the repercussions of his own imprudence. That bullet was the beginning of a downward spiral that would threaten and ultimately consume his most private states, he knew.

_Cowboy up, Black._

He mumbled something almost inaudible then finally gathered the strength required to move. He walked up to her and kneeled before her trembling figure.

"Were you having a bad dream?" he finally asked, his eyes never leaving hers. The tone of his voice was soft, even warm – it almost made her think that he actually cared.

He had shot the woman who had saved his life: how was he supposed to resume things after trying to murder her in cold blood? He shook his head involuntarily, fearing he had reached the point of no return. He traced her shoulder with his index finger, carefully dragging her blood as if he was painting her body with it, his finger was the brush, the strokes gentle and warm – even now, covered in sweat and surrounded by fear, her skin was inviting but how was he supposed to desire that body now, after blaming her for resurrecting his old ghosts, after addressing her as the cause of his misfortune?

 _Succubus_ , he thought, as he noticed how Alex shrunk beneath his touch. She nodded, finally, still silent and horrified. The bond uniting them and altogether tearing them apart was shaped as a nightmare and they were both trapped in it, unable to escape.

"I was sleeping, you coward!" She was trying hard to hide the fear in her voice behind a façade of false bravado but even so, he had never heard her sound so cold and menacing before. Well past the point of tears, she was finally embracing the notion that Black was more than a living museum – he was simply more than a stereotyped pose abstracted from the context of a history book: his cruelty was real, just as real as the flesh covering his body, and he had pulled the trigger. No more flirting, no more baseless speculation, no more fooling around. He was ready. He was finally ready to end her.

He examined his fingers, now coated by her blood – the impurity of his actions was frightening, even for himself. He bared the most puzzled look, as his gaze wandered from his own hand to her equally quizzical expression – he reached out and touched her, those same polluted fingers traveled the outline of her jaw, painting her face with her own blood.

She slapped him hard, even with a trembling hand. " _I warn you, there won't be a third time_ "- he had said just a few hours ago. She didn't care; they both were standing on the edge of a ravine, beyond threats, beyond all tension – that atmosphere they were sharing, that air they were both breathing was neither thick nor tensed – it was a void, it was a whole nothingness. He didn't fight her. Thrown off-balance, he fell backward, his knees bent slightly as he landed on his side, his bleak expression still lingering before her eyes. A halo of repressed testosterone enveloped him as he sat up again: even though that woman was somehow awakening his long lost loved ones he knew she hadn't burnt down the old liquor store, she hadn't forced Amanda into marrying the town's barber and of course, she hadn't silenced his own mother.

He reached out for her once more, now more determined than before. She panicked, as she found herself trapped between his body and the shelves behind her back. Black grabbed her by her waist as she kicked and yelled, pleading him to let her go, fearing the worst was yet to come – he silenced her, by covering her mouth with his free hand.

"Hush now," he commanded softly into her ear as he got up slowly, her body now leaned against his – Alex scratched his tattooed arm with her nails as she buried her digits deep into his skin: a sullen moan escaped his lips but he didn't mind: he held her tight in his arms, lifting her feet slightly from the ground and walked towards the table where he finally placed her.

Her glowering gaze was both menacing and heartbreaking. She was sitting on the table, her legs hovering before him as he placed himself between her extremities, standing right in front of her. Black's expression was now deadpan, as he inspected her features carefully as if trying to take her picture with his eyes. She observed him in silence, as she considered the possibility that maybe his longevity had, in fact, finally succeeded: the exaggerated amount of years that the man had lived must have made him snap. His changing states, now seen as a natural progression of a twisted mind, looked like the concatenation of seasons during a year -  _normal_   _Black_  first succumbed to _cold-blooded gunman Black_  who, in time, fell before the rise of  _puzzling, mysterious Black_  and now that version of him was receding as well: it was finally turn for  _deranged Black_  to come out and play.

Alex evaluated her own train of thought as the echoes in her head started to question her own beliefs:  _normal Black_? The notion of a normal Erron Black, even considered from the distant kaleidoscope of time, seemed too obscured, too contrived to be true: the man had been born a monster, and the borrowed extension of his existence had only given free rein to his darkest specters.

"I didn't come this far for you to just kill me while I'm asleep," she retaliated, trying to bring some sensitivity into the matter. He took off his black sleeveless shirt and leaned forward, drowning the distance separating their bodies:

"Easy now," he whispered as he softly cleaned the blood still flowing down her shoulder. With gentle, delicate care he used his sleeveless shirt to apply pressure and stop the bleeding. She cocked her head slightly, taking in the view with amazed eyes wide opened. He moved closer, his breathing now warming up the skin of her forearm – then he suddenly stopped, discarding the piece of clothing on the table, and cupped her face with his steady hands, allowing one of his thumbs to trace the outline of her upper lip – she narrowed her eyes, unsure about what to expect from such an unstable version of Black: she could smell the remaining of gunpowder still scattered on his fingers yet that man taking care of her was miles away from the one who had tried to murder her just moments ago. He took a deep breath as he inhaled the eerie mixture of her natural scent and the nervous sweating that had covered her a while ago; even while romancing her in the confines of his own skin she was still trembling like a leaf about to fall from the tree. He leaned closer, as he ventured a kiss – he closed his eyes as his lips barely touched hers but only briefly: the third slap of the night disrupted his trance as her eyes, fixed on his, were clearly indicating that he was uninvited to the paradise of her mouth.

Black took a step back, slowly, and lowered his head as he went back to his room – he emerged from the darkness of his chamber a few minutes later: he had changed his clothes and he had also picked up his gun from the ground. He placed the infamous pistol in one of his holders as he walked past an absorbed Alex, still sitting on the table, watching his every move.

"There's my bed," he informed her without daring to make eye contact – "use it."

"Thought you said you didn't want to set a precedent." She managed to say.

Black didn't answer – only a tired sigh escaped his lips as he simply walked away and stepped into the night of the Lei Chen Mountains.

Only when the door closed behind him as Black left the cabin, she allowed herself to cry.

* * *

  **Part II**

**Evidence on Things Unseen**

* * *

  _"Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures and in one of them I am your enemy."_

Jorge Luis Borges — Ficciones

* * *

After a moment of contemplation, she finally rose from her place and decided to take on his offer – he was gone, true, but the whirlpool of inner chaos effortlessly manufactured solely by his reactionary senses was still there, ever present and suffocating. She climbed up to his bed and took a deep breath: his world, as frightening and savage as it was, was dragging her down along his own instability – she needed to stay afloat and clear her mind after everything she had been through that night. Everything had happened so fast before her eyes she had barely had the time to assimilate what was really going on: Black had just tried to murder her for no apparent reason and she had no choice but to stay there with him.

Black's bed, the bed she had been sleeping in ever since entering that cabin, was usually comfortable and warm but not that night – Alex turned and tossed a thousand times before succumbing to slumber, too tired to fight all the feelings displayed before her like a colorful panoptic of raging emotions. The question, still transfixed in the back of her mind, was persistent: why? Why would he try to murder her now, in her sleep, like a silent coward too afraid to face reality? The fierceness shown by his actions proved that the man was the embodiment of brutality but the true nature of his spirit - in case he still had such a thing - hidden behind his motives, was still a complete mystery.

There was something extremely compelling about him – not simple, plain attraction but something far more appealing than his treacherous ways: theirs was a complex, intricate relationship she knew. He had tried to end her yet he had also tried to steal a kiss from her lips; and she, as horrified as she was, was left pondering on what could have happened if only he had tried to kiss her in a different scenario, under different circumstances – the third slap, perhaps, would have never existed; maybe she would have let him in.

She considered briefly the notion of the Stockholm syndrome even though she knew he wasn't exactly her captor: she wasn't kidnapped - as Black had stated, she was free to leave the cabin, he wouldn't stop her. Yet her staying was sealed by more than just mere dependence: it was true that, in her eyes, Black still was the best chance she had to get back home but there was something about the man that she couldn't control, that she couldn't quite place, and as disturbing as that was, it was equally enticing to her senses.

The midday sunlight woke her. She got up and changed, then left Black's bedchamber only to find that both, the cowboy mercenary and Aalem had already had lunch: their empty glasses and plates were still resting on the wooden table as she made her way to the small kitchen.

"I left some bread for you on the counter," Aalem said as the young Edenian boy saluted her with a shy smile.

"Where's Black?" she asked, as she reciprocated the smile.

"He's bathing," the boy shrugged slightly as he kissed Alex goodbye before returning to his surveillance spot in the mountain.

She sat on the counter and started eating the bread when Black's baritone voice startled her:

"Aalem, towel," the mercenary demanded.

"Aalem's gone," she yelled back.

“Oh,” a brief pause followed, "then you get me a towel," Black commanded, finally, causing her to roll her eyes in disgust.

She got up and walked back to Black's room where she picked a clean towel from his wardrobe – the small route separating her from him was filled by a tourbillon of contradictions and thoughts as she tried to figure out what to do, how to face him, how to look him in the eye after the events of the previous night. Alex took a deep breath as she pressed her forehead against the back door separating her from Black,  _it's just a damn towel_ , she thought, searching for some self-determination.

The bathtub was placed right outside the cabin, facing the west side of the mountain – in the backyard, as Aalem would call it. It was a rudimentary device improvised by Black himself but, in the long run, it did the trick. The tub was, in fact, a large, rectangular metal compartment that had pipes placed all around it: the largest pipe, placed right upon the edge of the bathtub, recreated a shower and the rest of the thinner pipes were the conduits for the water supply, drained directly from the mountain top, given the fact that the region was a vast immensity of land where the winter snow, while meeting, gave birth to streams that grew into cold, glassy-watered, restless rivers that also generated the majority of the water they consumed and used in the cabin. Placed at the right end of the tub, Black had also built a heating engine fueled by kerosene smuggled directly from Earthrealm to make bathing in the wilderness a little bit more comfortable: the water would be tepid in the end, not exactly hot, but the temperature was bearable – it was bad enough that the tub was placed outside the cabin, but having to shower with water brought straight from glacial rivers was a challenge that Black was not willing to face.

She placed the towel on a wooden log a few feet away from the bathtub and walked away slowly, without even looking at him.

"I'm not gonna walk all the way over there," Black's elocution made her stop on her tracks – she gulped, rolled her eyes and turned around; then picked up the towel, “Guess you’ll have to stay in the tub, then,” the woman laughed but the gunman furrowed his brow.

"Don't stay staring, that's just plain rude," he spat venomously.

But she couldn't help it: watching him bathe was just like watching a cat fighting water.

"You know, your face is also part of your body," she teased him dryly as the mercenary stood up in the bathtub. It was true: there were traces of old, dried kohl streaming down his cheeks. The woman walked up to him and scrubbed his face with the battered sponge she found floating on the water – he fidgeted impatiently under her touch:

"Leave it alone," Black ordered as he tried fruitlessly to stop Alex from cleaning up his visage.

"You look like a whore who just had a rough night," the woman retorted as she scrubbed harder, "that shit’s gonna ruin your skin."

_Well, I had a rough night._

"My skin's just fine," he protested.

"Your skin needs moisturizing," Alex snapped back quickly as she scrubbed his face unceasingly, his cheeks burning under the frantic sponge.

"I'm not a woman," Black sentenced – "I'm a man of the desert."

With those last words, she took a step back and admired her work: the kohl had completely disappeared and now, for the first time, his face was completely naked – no make-up, no hat, no mask or bandana to hide his identity. The man was a fine specimen, of that she had no doubt. But not only his face was bare in front of her – his whole body, naked, stood towering over her; the unbearable weight of his mockery now reflected in the way his lips were curling up, the Adonis in him finally underlying his colors and shadows.

She blushed as her eyes traveled the length of his body. Ashamed, she turned around and started to leave.

"Where do you think you're going?" he said, his seductive tone taking over his voice, "Inside, now," he finally commanded as he discarded the towel carelessly on the ground.

She stopped once again and turned around, puzzled by him, unsure about what to expect from the man who had tried to murder her the night before.

"Careful, Narcissus," she retorted as she fixed her cold gaze on his - blinking was not even an option anymore – "Don't stare at your own reflection for too long."

He walked passed her and went inside the cabin, his deadpan expression dismissing her bitter remarks. Then he suddenly stopped, turned around and asked:

"Did you just dare call me a whore?" He cocked an eyebrow slightly, as he turned around to face her.

With him around, to dare or not to dare was simply an inexistent difference. Alex shrugged involuntarily as she started to feel a menacing line of cold sweat running down her spine: after all, that man had tried to murder her the night before, perhaps a bitter, silly remark was all that he needed to explode once again and deep down she knew, she was certain, in case his supernova-like senses were to outburst again, she wouldn't be so lucky to live to tell the story.

"Alexandra, I said inside," his voice shook her as he placed one of his hands on her arm and hurried her inside, "my room."

She stood in the center of the cabin, not truly wanting to walk inside his bedchamber. She observed him as he walked around shamelessly naked: he read Aalem's records, poured himself a glass of water, searched the table for a pack of smokes and then, finally, went to his room oblivious of the fact that her feet were still glued to the ground, making it impossible for Alex to move. He let out a soft grunt as he leaned against the door of his bedchamber, waiting for the woman to break the disruptive spell paralyzing her.

"What, you've never seen a penis before? I thought you were a doctor," Black teased her impatiently.

"You're disgusting," Alex retorted.

"Watch Ferra as she cleans up Torr, that will definitely redefine 'disgusting' for you," Black shrugged as he recalled the symbiotic pairing's ritualistic behavior each morning right after breakfast.

He stayed with his arm outstretched, holding the door open for her. Alex eyed him, unsure if she truly wanted to walk inside his bedchamber with his bare figure waiting for her – she lowered her eyes briefly, involuntarily, losing the battle: the laceration across his stomach was completely healed, she noticed - a pale shadow of pink surfacing from his epidermis: he had been lucky – not only he had survived what could have been fatal for any other man but also no traces of his unfortunate showdown with the mysterious woman in the mountains would be imprinted on his never fading body. She finally entered his bedroom, her eyes still glued to his miraculous healing.

He cocked one eyebrow at the sight of her eyes traveling his mid-section. Whatever he had on his mind was clearly being pushed away by her medical concerns.

"Aalem said you were curious about my body," he blurted out, sarcasm taking over his features as her rictus suddenly changed, now darkened and hardened, offended by his lack of integrity and respect.

"Here it is."

The woman narrowed her eyes at his impertinence – her gaze was fixed on his again as if refusing to let her vision wander and explore the entirety of his existence.

"About how it works." She said, confusion showing all over his visage. "I'm curious about how it works."

It was _that_  Black again, the unbearable, chauvinist, sexist and despicable mercenary – the Black that she would get most of the time. That  _other_  Black, the one from the previous night, was a distant epiphany threatening her sanity: did he even exist? Perhaps her need had created a warmer yet madder version of Black inside her head, a palliative for her loneliness. That warmer version of Black had tried to end her, granted, but he had also shown her some deeper, richer colors of his most private insights and he had made her feel  _something_  – something she couldn't quite place yet, but something other than solitude and frustration.

She sighted inaudibly as she moved closer to the mercenary. Perhaps time and distance were factors that had a weight of their own – and theirs were eerie ways, she knew.

"Is there anything you don't tell each other?" she asked – and even though her elocution was consumed by irony and resentment, deep down she knew those words were merely an excuse to face reality once again:  _that_  Black had only existed for a brief, fleeting moment and now he was lost in the hourglass of his own torturous existence.

"What do you want to know?" he asked her, "I simply made a deal, but I don't know the specifics." He admitted softly as he sat down on his bed.

"I was just wondering how some things work in your organism – say, your teeth, they should be showing some extensive signs of advanced decay by now but they are not. Osteoporosis should be an issue for a man your age but your bones are solid structures, it's like they have a never-ending calcium supply feeding them. Your lungs; especially now that I know you smoke…"

"Only occasionally." He acknowledged.

"See, I understand that Shang Tsung's magic has slowed your aging process, but there are some things that, as a doctor…" she paused, trying to find the right words to finish that sentence.

"Render you speechless." He helped her. "I don't have the answers you're looking for. If anything, I can tell you that I've never really cared about such things. In fact, I've spent the last hundred years smoking, drinking, sleeping with a variety of strangers, being beaten, being shot at, being cut and slashed and in spite of all that, here I am," a crooked smile appeared timidly at the corner of his mouth; his lips, curling up slowly, were brightening his centurial face.

Alex nodded in silence as she observed Black leaving the room, still naked and clearly unashamed.

'Shame' was not a concept made to endure the test of time, she concluded. 'Greed', possibly, was an example of a notion made to last, built to transcend generation after generation, just like the meanings of 'lust' or maybe even 'violence' could survive decades, even centuries on their own – but not 'shame.' Erron Black was the living proof of that.

He went back to his chamber carrying a decanter in his right hand. He poured himself a glass of a dark crimson beverage then stirred it carefully: "Want a drink?" he offered her as he turned around to face Alex once again.

"What's that?" The liquid looked pretty much like blood but Alex knew cowboys and vampires were not the same things. At least, of that, she was positive.

"Wildrose," he replied as he reached for the decanter once again. "Aalem prepares it, was his father's recipe." Black stirred the second glass and handed it to Alex. "It looks like blood; I know…" he said, "but it's sweet, you'll like it."

Alex inspected the glass and stirred its content some more.

"Drink it already," he commanded, exasperated by her mistrust. She obeyed, as she moistened her lips with the beverage.

"It's… sour," she reflected, visibly disgusted.

"After the sixth glass everything tastes the same," Black retaliated quickly as he placed the decanter on the little wooden bedside table.

She stared at his back and his arms, reciprocating the look he had given her back in the cell while unveiling the scars scattered on her body – there were marks covering his body as well, several cuts in his arms, what appeared to be some sort of a brand on one of his shoulders and his back had two peculiar scars, a pair of white diagonal lines stretching from his collarbone to his shoulder blade – flogging scars, she thought.

"How long will you be staying with us?" Alex asked, trying to make some futile conversation.

"Not long. I'm leaving tomorrow night," he answered as he finished his drink.

"Back to the palace?"

He nodded.

"Indeed."

There were no traces of the previous night. His face, once again a secluded fortress, was miles away from that emotional Black that had tried to murder and kiss her almost simultaneously. Black turned around and finally began to dress then he looked over his shoulder, almost ordering Alex to leave: with just one look from his indifferent eyes she understood that the events of the previous night had been buried deep within him, never to surface again.

"Alright, then, guess I'll go now," her lower lip trembled as she struggled to blink back the tears before they dripped down her cheeks – 'gattopardo' was the only concept on her mind, as she remembered Lampedusa's work. The notion left her feeling vulnerable like a child, naked in front of him even when she had been the one fully dressed: his change had been more apparent than real, she understood – he had successfully fooled her into thinking that everything had changed, only to prove later than everything still remained the same.

Black, noticing the storm gathering inside of her, moved closer; his patronizing eyes now trying to make her understand that there was no use for her to try to swim in his mud.

"Forgot my records," Aalem interrupted them, as he walked inside Black's chamber. "Have you seen my scratch pad?"

"I took it," Black answered as he took a step backward, "it's on my bed."

The young Edenian tried to grab the book but Black stretched his arm, stopping him.

"You stay here; I'll go," he ordered as he picked up his poncho and left the room. Alex stayed there, still pinned down to the ground beneath her feet, unable to move.

"I told you, you are not his type," The boy shrugged.

"It's not what you think," she smiled shyly, as tears started streaming down her face.

"The flesh is weak," Aalem concluded, as he stroked her back gently, comforting her.

"Where did you hear that?" Alex asked, even though she already knew the answer.

Aalem cleared his throat, "Guess who?" he asked as he searched Black's wardrobe until he found what he was looking for: he put on Erron's cowboy hat and, mimicking the gunslinger, the boy said: "The difference between men and women, kid, is that if a woman doesn't want to get laid, then there's nothing you can do to change her mind. If a man doesn't want to get laid – as stupid and crazy as it may sound – the only thing a woman has to do is place her hands in the right spot and in a couple of minutes the man won't even remember his name, or the city where he was born, or his mother's birthday and all that will remain of his determination will be some clothes scattered here and there, like souvenirs," they both laughed for a brief moment, until Aalem took off Black's hat and sat on the mercenary's bed.

"I'm not sure if it works that way," Alex answered, grinning.

"How am I supposed to know?" the young Edenian shrugged once more.

"What?" Alex asked with eyes wide open – "You've never…?"

Aalem simply shook his head.

"He's not that bad," The boy confessed after a while.

"He tried to murder me," Alex let out softly as she sat beside him.

"The fact that he's not bad doesn't necessarily mean that he's good," The Edenian went on, puzzling the woman, "he is what he is; nothing more, nothing less," he patted her shoulder gently, reassuring her, "here, let me show you something," he said as he grabbed his scratch pad – right under his note, the mercenary's message seemed to be a battered silver lining, but it was a silver lining nonetheless, she reckoned.

" _She's trying,"_  he had written.

"I guess you're not the only one that’s trying," Aalem concluded as he placed his arms around her, allowing the doctor to bury her face on his shoulder and cry.


	11. Pandora's

Arc II

Chapter XI

**Pandora's**

* * *

  _"You can tell much about what was, only from what it's left."_

Diana Gabaldon — Dragonfly in Amber

* * *

"I know I shouldn't be doing this, but there's something that might help you understand," Aalem said as he broke the embrace slowly, careful not to startle the woman weeping in his arms. Alex swallowed, now that the young Edenian was giving her a moment to wipe her face and regain her composure; her curious eyes followed the boy as he stood up and made his way to the cowboy's wardrobe again where he began the intricate search for that treasured, private bounty he knew too well to pretend it wasn't there, within his reach, for him to grab and expose to the woman in need of something more than just mere gestures of sympathy. The mercenary had tried to murder her – Aalem knew he would have to go to extraordinary lengths for the crystal-like, fragile stability of the trio to be finally restored and even so, he still held some reservations about the potential success of his decision. She had seen an undressed Black – now it was time for her to see a truly naked Black.

"Bear with me," the kid let out clumsily, now that he was almost buried under a pile of old ponchos and battered trousers. After a few moments of struggle he finally emerged from the dark dwelling in the confines of Black's wardrobe; his features triumphant and radiant as he held a medium-sized wooden box between his proud hands.

He moved nearer the puzzled woman still sitting on Black's bed as he brushed off the dust from the box with careful hands,

"If he ever finds out that you got your hands on this –" he began as he raised an eyebrow anticipating the loyalty he was about to demand from Alex - "I had nothing to do with it." He handed her the box and she took it almost immediately. The intrigue, thick and constantly evolving, was making it hard for her to quiet the voices gathering inside her head. Her eyes inspected the cracks and the extensive damage reflected on the surface of the box; definitive signs and perpetual brands inflicted by the cruel mechanism behind a clock talking about the incessant passing of the years and the never-ending, ruthless pedagogy of time.

"Of course," she nodded solemnly as her fingers caressed the delicate surface. Loyalty demanded and loyalty assured, the contents of that box were about to open the gates to a mystery she had yet to discover; the bond between the Earthrealmer and the Edenian was now sealed by a tacit pact of mutual trust and treasured understanding.

Aalem nodded in silence as a warm and welcoming expression of gratitude set on his face – suddenly she wasn't that annoying little person anymore; now she was about to cross that fortified frontier separating those allowed into the mercenary's past and those who would die without even catching a glimpse of his true persona.

"I'll go now. You better do this on your own," the young Edenian suggested softly as he reached for the door, "are you going to be alright?" he asked with his right hand already touching the doorknob.

"I think so," Alex's quivering voice was somehow reassuring. She had exposed such profound sadness and turmoil it wasn't easy for the boy to leave her alone yet he knew, deep down, that those things waiting to be found inside Black's private Pandora's box could potentially redefine her perceptions and that moment – that crucial, unique moment was made for her eyes and her eyes only.

"I'll come back in a while, we have to leave everything as it was – otherwise, he'll notice," the boy sentenced before finally leaving the room.

She opened the box delicately; as if afraid it might break after all those years in secluded secrecy. Most of the papers Black had chosen to preserve were already ruined by the merciless passing of the years, making it almost impossible for Alex to read them. The ink, subjugated by time and its inclemency, was now a blurred pattern witnessing the extinguished existence of people and places that were long gone by now.

Her digits kept on searching through the contents of the box – even though she didn't even know what she was looking for she assumed that there would be something worth seeing, worth reading, worth finding; otherwise Aalem wouldn't have given her the chance to explore the cowboy's secret redoubt of memories worth keeping. Discovering nostalgia in Black was already a powerful, groundbreaking milestone per se yet she was certain that hidden under a thin layer of yesteryears' dust she would find something else.

She frowned, as her eyes adjusted to the yellowish light emanating from the torch – the antique touch of amber was perpetrating a luminous glow that added to the atmosphere: the past, unfolded before her eyes, was a sight of ancient smoke and legendary dust tearing apart the barrier of the frightening time-space continuum. She raised an eyebrow, as the first true valuable discovery of the evening appeared as an epiphany summoning all kinds of faith: there was a Bible in the box.

Even though she wasn't certain the book was actually Black's its sole presence among his treasured mementos was a complete enigma. The thought of Black as a religious man felt foreign and almost unreal but Alex soon realized that the Bible itself wasn't the bigger prize: there were two photographs hidden inside the blue-covered book. The images, now too thin and grainy to be examined thoroughly, felt rough to the touch and seemed too fragile to be held by Alex's nervous fingers. The faces were mostly blurred but even so, she deduced those were Civil War pictures. There were names written down at the back of each photograph; Black's handwriting making it clear he wouldn't forget those moments:

" _Ashworth, Bennie, Kid Rolland, Baker, Chapman, Cole and me. Brownsville, Texas. November 1863."_  A bunch of soldiers, all carrying weapons, were embracing each other. The overall image of their faces seemed somehow happy, maybe even joyful, but it was impossible to fully appreciate those visages or even recognize Black among his fellow comrades.

The vision of war was accompanied by the portrayal of love and tenderness as if they were counter measuring the blood and the gore of civil havoc with their souls.

" _Nurse Anna-Marie Myers and me. Laredo, Texas. March 1864."_ A lovely young woman, straight dark hair about her shoulders, was gleefully smiling next to a soldier boy that looked an awful lot like Black. Their faces, more visible and distinguishable than the ones in the previous picture, were opening the window to a distant past Alex felt too foreign to completely appreciate it.

A man of nostalgia, religion, and love – that simply didn't sound like Black's description.

She sat on the floor with the box on her lap as she carefully inspected the young couple in the photograph. They both looked very young in the picture yet the dark haired lady looked even younger than the soldier – in her face, traces of the child she used to be were exposing an incipient adulthood, embroidered with the last laces of naiveté that the mayhem of war would definitely shred to pieces in no time. Their fingers were intertwined and the shared body language was showing a kind of proximity very similar to the one found in the early stages of a timid, new-born love affair. The spark in her eyes; the definitive way their youthful smiles were screaming of a caring, wholehearted affection was heartbreaking: that woman next to Black was the image of purity itself. After a moment of deep contemplation, Alex rolled her eyes and sighed, exasperated, as her mind couldn't quite understand how rummaging through Black's past was supposed to help her see the man under a different light. Yes, he had a past; but a past would always be a birthright for everyone. She scattered his memories on the floor, right next to her legs - besides unreadable pieces of paper, a lovely green hair ribbon, two train tickets – the date and destination too blurred to be read or maybe even interpreted - and the two photographs there was also a Derringer pistol, a Butterfield revolver, a rusted medium-sized knife and a brown box of cartridges, half-empty. Only when she reached the bottom of the box she understood why Aalem had shown it to her: there was another blue-covered book, slightly bigger than the Bible she had previously found. Its edges were burnt and most of its pages had clearly been consumed by the cruelty of fire yet the truth, evident and within reach for the first time, was beginning to show. The word "Diary" in capital letters and the name "Anna-Marie Myers" were written on the cover. Alex took the damaged book; the sandy texture of the paper making her fingers dusty – the words written on those pages that had miraculously survived the fire were almost unreadable by now yet the nurse's private journal was not what the young Edenian had in mind: safe inside the diary, almost intact in spite of everything, the letter was calling her on; summoning a past she wasn't sure she should be visiting yet it was so diaphanous, so inviting she couldn't help herself.

Carried by a tourbillion of questions and emotions, Alex unfolded the centurial piece of paper as her eager eyes traveled through the young nurse's perfect calligraphy:

_Brenham,_

_March, 29th - 1865_

_Dear Mamma:_

_Now I can clearly see why you didn't want me to come here – it's the blood spilled and the smell of burnt flesh what should be keeping me up all night but, truth be told, none of those things could actually make me shed a tear right now. You see, as days go by, sensitivity is slowly leaving me; it's just as if death and horror have become part of this landscape, and there's nothing we can do about it._

_I wish you were here to hold me, to tell me everything's going to be alright. Guess he's right, after all, and I'm just a little girl playing nurse when I should be home, playing with my dolls and getting new dresses._

_I have followed Erron to an abandoned liquor store a few miles away from the battlefront – the place is not a home, as you can surely imagine, but at least we are safe for now and all those haunting, agonizing screams from our fellow soldiers can't wake us up in the middle of the night anymore. This reality has become much too grim, Ma, and Erron's certain – the South is about to fall and we don't want to be here when that happens. He has plans for the future, you know? He says he's going to talk to his uncle and become a miner; I don't know if I like that idea but he's made it perfectly clear that he's not going back to Arroya when this is all over, he says there's nothing for him there besides the suffocating dust and his bitter memories. Though sometimes I doubt it, you know? – Maybe the memories are more suffocating than the dust…_

_I trust you haven't told Papa that I'm with child – I can't even bring myself to believe this yet and it pains me so much to know that he'll feel that I've brought disgrace and dishonor upon his name. I know this is not the way he would have wanted this to happen – an unmarried daughter, his only daughter, pregnant with the child of a soldier that he doesn't even know yet… I still haven't told Erron either, I just don't know how. Sometimes he's just so absorbed in his own world that he seems to be unreachable, it's like he's right here with me but long gone at the same time and it breaks my heart to know that he's still probably mourning his mother when I'm about to tell him that he's about to become a father… I'm afraid it might break him inside, it really frightens me to think that this lovely boy left his hometown and joined a war because he had nothing left to lose, he just wanted to die – but now the South will fall and things shall change; who knows everything we’ll lose when that happens? And when the baby comes he's also going to lose that solitude he has treasured ever since joining this fight. I know he's not ready to become a father, he doesn't want to be ready, that's for sure – but what can I do? How am I supposed to force him into accepting this whole new life when he probably doesn't want to be a part of it?_

_Every night, when I'm about to sleep, I can hear your voice telling me that I shouldn't have followed him, that he didn't seem right for me but trust me, Ma, it was inevitable. I feel like air escapes me when he comes near me and I can't breathe, I cannot move, for he has become both the air in my lungs and the ground beneath my feet. I knew I loved him instantly and, truth be told, I know becoming a father is not what he wants – but all I can do is hope; hope that this child will make him come back down to me, hope that there will be a happy ending for us – once this war is over, once we're a family._

_Please don't think less of me, Ma. I'm sure you know I would never do you wrong._

_Please kiss Papa for me, I miss you both greatly._

_Annie._

A man of nostalgia, religion, love – and a father.

The parental image of Black rocking his baby gently, tenderly in his arms was all she could see. His past was Medusa, she finally understood; it could turn him into stone the minute he dared look back.

But why did he have that letter? Perhaps Anna-Marie had changed her mind at the last minute, maybe sending that letter was not a good idea after all. The darker thought was simply too excruciatingly sad to be even considered: perhaps she never got the chance to send it.

Aalem entered the room to find Alex still sitting on the floor – a collection of mementos from Black's past was still scattered all around her. The woman had folded the letter again and placed it inside Annie's journal where it belonged yet her hands were still clinging to the blue-covered book, unable to let go.

"We should put everything back in its place," the boy suggested as he stood right behind her. His voice was timid; barely audible, as if frightened to startle her.

"I never thought of him as a man capable of sentimentalism," Alex let out after a few seconds in silence.

"He's not," Aalem answered as he kneeled beside her, his hands already collecting the western memorabilia and placing most pieces of Black's past back inside the box.

"Then why did he keep all this stuff?" She asked, not entirely rhetorically, as she finally handed him the journal.

"To remember, mostly. But also not to forget."

"Remember what? Forget about what? The events of a previous life that he clearly neglects; that he has evidently buried deep inside of him? People who have been dead for ages now? These things should not mean anything to him by now; or at least that's what he's been so adamantly trying to show the world: that he doesn't give a shit, that he doesn't have a past, that nothing truly reaches him," the coarseness of her voice, intrinsically related to the questions she was asking was blunt and certainly challenging yet she knew those unspoken answers were evident and undeniable: there was definitely more to him; he wasn't just a cold-hearted bandolero. He had colors, and shades and shadows and all those hues and tones were reverberating together inside the same chaotic prism.

After a moment of complete silence, she stood up and finally cooperated with the young Edenian. She opened the wardrobe and they put everything back into place.

"To remember what his life could have been like," Aalem let out without making eye-contact, "and to make sure he never forgets the ones who made him the man he is today," the young boy went on as he reflected upon his employer's most intimate raison d'être as he gathered all ponchos and trousers and started folding them carefully.

_And what kind of a man is that?_

Her eyes inspected the boy – there were just too many questions waiting to be answered; too many riddles waiting to be solved: each one of the objects inside Black's box had its own tale to tell.

"I know the whole story but I won't tell you, it's not my secret to share. I merely showed you that he's not the man you think he is but I can't be sure if he'll ever trust you with his story; now you have to choose: stop now and accept the simple fact that there's more to him than meets the eye or keep digging. But if you are going to keep digging all I can do is warn you: it doesn't have a happy ending," the boy shook his head, an expression of penitent sorrow set on his face. He eyed the woman briefly, as he moved closer to the wardrobe, his hands and forearms busy with the cowboy's clothes. Alex took one last look at the box; now that it was about to be buried in the banality of clothes and accessories: opening that box had just been like peering through a magnifying glass pointed directly at a very distant past, she reflected. An ellipsis of time and space, connecting an Earthrealm she had never seen with the one she missed so dearly.

She took a step back, still moved by the tiny pieces of a mysterious story she had just begun unveiling. The truth, ignited and evident, hit her hard as a rock: the mercenary was still a stranger to her and she was, equally, a stranger to him - they didn't really know anything about each other. She had tended to his wounds, he had played her on multiple occasions, he had clearly desired her body, she had hurt him, he had freed her, she had followed him, he had tried to murder her and kiss her almost simultaneously, she had seen him naked, now they were sharing a cabin in the mountains – yet they didn't truly know anything about each other.

"Comfort for him may have come a little too late," she pondered, her weakened voiced was almost whispering those words letter by letter as her eyes witnessed the cruel closing of those doors, forever secluding  _that lovely boy_ who had _left his hometown and joined a war because he had nothing left to lose_  from the coward bastard who had tried to end her life while she was asleep. Everything in between the lovely boy and the cruel bastard was a muted parenthesis.

"Who said comfort ever came?" Aalem mused out loud as he grabbed her by the shoulder and started to walk towards the door and the woman groaned slightly as the young Edenian's careless touch suddenly brushed the back of her shoulder.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. How is it?" The boy asked, ashamed and partially embarrassed at his own clumsiness.

"It's fine, it's… it's really nothing." She began, conciliatorily. "It's just a scratch."

"I hope it doesn't leave your skin marked for good," the boy said, a sheepishly raised eyebrow exposing his genuine concern.

"I hope it does," Alex contradicted him, "to remember, mostly. To make sure I don’t forget," the tone of her voice was softer than before as she echoed his words. "Why don't you go now and relieve Black from his surveillance duties? The man didn't get any sleep last night and it's a long way to the palace," she patted his shoulder gently, reassuring the boy that she was alright. "Tell him to come over, maybe rest for a while, I'll make dinner for the three of us." The sweet, caring thoughtfulness of her speech was covering her true intentions: she really wanted the boy to leave; she truly wanted to be left alone so her mind could be free to wander through Black's past with no curious eyes flickering nearby. The boy nodded, as he reached for the cabin's front door:

"You didn't think he was always like this, did you?" The question was honest, and honesty was all the boy was demanding from her.

Alex shrugged timidly as she struggled to find the right words to say.

Aalem noticed her fruitless effort and nodded quietly as he finally obeyed and left the cabin – she was alone again, her restless mind re-reading the mental copy of the letter she had forged with her tired neurons. The image of Black as a caring, gentle man in his twenties seemed somewhat surreal to her, the sole picture of his arms rocking a baby to sleep was enough to make her blood boil with questions and speculations that only Black himself could put to rest.

"Aalem said you suggested I rest a little," Black surprised her – the inquisitive eyes of the wolf dwelling in him staring at her impatiently. "How thoughtful of you," the irony encysted in his words, in perfect concordance with the raised eyebrow, was cold and uncomfortable; as if he knew she was actually trying to find a way to get rid of them both, even if only momentarily, to be free to venture herself into his confusing past once more. Black walked straight to his bedchamber and Alex followed him – her intentions barely hidden by a gesture of honest preoccupation.

"I was wondering, coming back to the list…" she began with her hands resting on the doorframe, "there are some things I need in order to complete my new medical kit, but I don't know if they can be acquired here in Outworld."

"With some time and patience almost anything can be acquired here in Outworld," he retorted nonchalantly, as he sat on his bed and took off his boots.

"These are simple things though, nothing complicated. Syringes, for example. Cannulas, needles, a stethoscope… I used to have my kit but it's long gone, you know?"

"Just add them to the list and give me some time to gather all you need. And close the door as you come out," He commanded harshly.

Alex, with her lips pressed tight, took a deep breath and grinned bitterly at him before going to the kitchen – that cold-hearted bastard had successfully gotten under her skin once again. She rested her forearms on the counter as she retraced the events of the previous night in her mind, his aggressiveness and his unleashed demons now shinning under the lights and shadows cast by Annie's letter and their picture together: her innocent face was calling her on; the way he had one of his arms around the young nurse's waist – the complicity; the cruel adoration that lies deep within any tragic love story - it was all too complex, too complicated to be understood.

Would Annie be able to look at him now with the same devotion in her eyes as she did back then? If she knew the things he was capable of; if she knew the man he had become – would she still love him as she had clearly loved him back then?

The woman was so caught up in the mercenary's shadowed past that she didn't hear his footsteps approaching her - "I really can't sleep," Black said, his baritone voice had successfully surprised her once more as he walked up to her. "I hate it when this happens; it's like I can only sleep at certain hours and if I don't I just go on and on, you know?" He scratched his forehead as he leaned his weary bones against the nearest wall.

"It's called  _sleeping cycle_ , and yours has clearly been altered," she explained as she turned around to face him, "your age doesn't help either."

"Oh, really? How so?" He asked, the fake curiosity in his eyes reaching out to the woman as he crossed his arms over his bare chest.

"As you get older, you sleep more lightly and get less deep sleep. Aging is also linked to shorter time spans of sleep, although studies show you still need as much sleep as when you were younger," she concluded. "Although none of the books I read on the subject talked about bicentennial people."

He frowned, displeased.

"This is the second time you assume I'm 200 years old. I'm barely 173," he raised an eyebrow gallantly as a timid chuckle escaped his lips.

"173 years old and you still remember your age? You're a living miracle," she mocked him, as she lowered her eyes breaking eye contact. "I bet some of my teachers would pay millions to have you for a day or two and study you."

"That's good money…"

Even though he was practically laughing at himself the woman was lost right in front of his eyes: their conversation had unexpectedly reopened a door she had presumed locked.

"See? That's one of the things I miss from Earthrealm the most," Alex paused, her unfocused eyes were accompanying her musings. "Studying and researching, and spending time at the library," she had forgotten the reason why she had chosen to stick with him no matter what: she wanted him to help her get back home.

"On a more personal scale; I also miss my family, my friends, my boyfriend – in case I still have one; it's been so long I don't even know anymore," she sighed as she recalled all those faces, all her beloved, treasured ones hidden inside her inner Pandora's Box.

"You and I remember Earthrealm very differently," the cowboy expressed with a voice softer than ever.

"What do you miss about it?"

He shook his head as a frown took over his face once again.

"Come on… There must be something you miss," she was smiling suddenly, her eyes seeing the vivid images of all those faces and places she was hoping to see again someday.

"Toothpicks," he finally confessed, nodding quietly to himself with a sign of serene self-assurance after being silent for a moment filled with what seemed to be deep meditation. "And dogs," he proceeded, his eyes brightened up as his words escaped his lips, "I miss having a dog around." His lips curled up slowly, "I got Reptile but… it's just… not the same, you know?" His broad smile was ominous yet calm – that was, finally, a genuine Black.

"What brought you here, Black?" She dared ask him as she moved nearer. Her interrogation seemed somewhat familiar as she recalled it: it was the same question that she had asked him some time ago; the unexpected lighthearted moment they were sharing had somehow triggered it, retrieved it; it had helped it resurface yet its meaning had changed, mutating those words into something new: it wasn't that unscrupulous, poisonous dagger she had thrown at him back then; now it was a softened but luminous beacon in a tunnel that had been dark for far too long. He smirked, his eyes never leaving hers, as he wondered what to answer – it had been so long he himself wasn't even sure what to reply.

Suddenly her expression changed as an idea set on her mind surreptitiously - inspired by Annie's letter the thought was strong and clear: it had a weight of its own. She took a step back and tapped her fingers fervently on the counter as she fully shaped the idea inside her brain; then she looked back at Black and said:

"I wonder, now that we've talked about how almost everything can be brought to Outworld, how about things going the other way around?"

A puzzled Black felt relieved that the woman had somehow put that heavy question in the backburner yet he was intrigued by her sullen, intricate proposal.

"I know you said you wouldn't help me get back home – but what about a letter? I could write a letter to my family to let them know I'm okay, to…"

"And what would you write, exactly?" Black stopped her train of thought, interrupting all her outspoken elucubrations.

"I would tell them that I'm fine; that…" Alex paused, as she realized the mercenary had a point: what could she possibly say to them? "I don't know now, but if you give me some time I'm sure I will be able to come up with some…"

"No." His blunt denial interrupted her again. "Why would you do that to your family?" Black questioned her as he frowned. "Image I said yes; imagine I agree to deliver this letter; what would you write?  _I'm alive_  – what for? Do you really want them to go through the struggle of a fruitless search? Or maybe you could just write  _I'm in a different realm right now_ – best case scenario they'll think you've joined a cult."

As painful as it was to acknowledge; deep down she knew he was right.

"Do they even know you're here? Did you even say goodbye to them or did you just disappear one day? Did you came here by yourself, was it even your decision?" Black went on, the frowny face still there; the preaching tone contaminating his speech was making all of her answers and possibilities seem dubious.

"Why the sudden interest?" He finally asked.

"Sudden interest? I've been trying to get back home ever since I set foot on this place – I have told you, you know about this. The fact that you've been distracting me never truly made me forget what I needed you for in the first place," her shaky voice replied – the man was getting on her nerves again.

Black opened his mouth to retort that last comment but the incessant bumping and knocking on the door startled them both; it wasn't the safe code they used for signaling the others to open up – it was a desperate sound, louder than usual, more chaotic than usual. They rushed their way to the cabin's entrance and Black, with his shoulder glued to the doorframe and his pistol ready to shoot, opened the door slowly – Aalem's body fell down against the door; his tunic covered in his own blood: a dagger, driven into the young Edenian's chest, was all they could see. Alex kneeled down before the boy and checked for vital signs – he was still alive. Black placed his gun back in its holder and helped her lift the young Edenian’s body. They placed him on the table and the boy struggled, as he tried to speak.

"Don't talk now, buddy," Alex said softly as Aalem tried to mumble something barely audible to her ears. She began tending to his wound as Black ran back to his bedroom to get dressed - then he took off, resolute: he was going to find the attacker out in the wilderness, blindly, and he was going to make him pay.

Unable to speak, the kid reached out for Alex. The tight fist slowly gave up until the smooth palm of his hand – the third Pandora's box of the day – was now exposing the tormenting, sinister sight responsible for freezing the blood running through her veins almost immediately: resting against his olive skin there was one of the unevenly shaped golden coins Black had given Harry at the beginning of this nightmare. The metal, now partially coated by Aalem's blood, was shining mercilessly in front of her bewildered eyes.


	12. Further Proof of a Godless Universe

Arc II

Chapter XII

**Further Proof of a Godless Universe**

* * *

  _"Look, you tell yourself, look how cold the world is becoming. The years will pass and after them will come grim loneliness, and old age, quaking on its stick, and after them misery and despair. Your fantasy world will grow pale; your dreams will fade and die, falling away like the yellow leaves from the trees."_

Fyodor Dostoevsky — White Nights

* * *

He knew that running blindly through the darkness, trying to catch a complete stranger with nothing but his feral instincts to guide him wasn't enough to consider his actions a chase; a chase – that's something else entirely: it encompasses a purpose and a target, a direction, and a directive; but even so he didn't mind – the old wolf marched through the wilderness, the immense emptiness of the landscape being his sole companion.

No, that wasn't a chase.

Not yet.

Most times you need to know who or what it is that you're chasing after. Your desired goal or prey must have a face. Maybe a name can equal the quintessential category of luxury sometimes but the face; the mental image of that visage escaping from you, trying to get out of reach and pleading for their lives in case you ever get your hands on them is completely necessary, he knew.

But sometimes you just can't have all the cards on the table, leave alone one up your sleeve.

Sometimes it's just a hunch.

An inexplicable feeling lacking all logical reasoning, an indomitable sensation telling you that someone's out there, lurking, their phantasmagorical presence threatening your senses, it creeps up on you; menacing and forever almighty underneath their mystified halo of anonymity.

That was a hunch.

He couldn't see the man that was running away from him; he didn't even know who he was yet his feet kept marching anyway as his every instinct forced him to go on. The hunter in him, awaken and angry, was running with a purpose: retribution.

Black's relentless feet were progressing through the unbearable darkness. The air, freezing and merciless, was not enough to slow him down: he was going to catch that bastard even if he had to climb every mountain in the region.

He knew the path like the back of his hand yet his raging mind was dangerously trying to divert him with a million questions and hypothesis. Why now? Who was that man? Why Aalem? Was he the same man that had been hiding by the mountainside only a couple of days before all this?

_Just one bullet, in time, the minute you realized there was someone hiding by the mountainside, and none of this would have happened._

The rebel-seekers, he concluded instinctively, were the ones to be held responsible for the attack. The obvious thought startled him, as he stopped briefly to catch his breath.

A whitened, laborious puff of air meant to refill his lungs with oxygen seemed refreshing and necessary before resuming his march. He touched his tired knees and cursed through clenched teeth: just one bullet aimed at that man in time and they wouldn't be trapped in such a macabre predicament - the young Edenian's defenseless body wouldn't be harmed, he himself wouldn't be out there, in the freezing magnificent darkness of the mountains, running wildly after that nameless ghost. He narrowed his eyes as an attempt to adjust his wary vision to the blackest of nights – the man was near, Black could sense it like the wild old wolf that he was.

Now it wasn't the time for regrets or heavy thoughts, he knew.

He was Erron Black. He would never be the prey; he would always be the hunter.

Fumbling his way through the slope, the mercenary finally caught a glimpse of the attacker's shadow moving fast among the naked branches facing the ravine. Black moved soundlessly and slowly towards the trees and glued his side to the rough but damp bark of the saplings' slender trunks. He was seething, but he knew his steady hands would become his anchor once again: no mere breeze was freezing enough to make his fingers tremble. No commotion was overwhelming enough to make him miss his target.

No commotion.

But  _that_  commotion, he recalled involuntarily as his mind tried to bring him back to  _that_  night.

She should be dead. Only a mere coincidence had saved her that night.

_Cowboy up, Black._

_All things happen for a reason._

_Aalem needs her._

_Now more than ever._

Peering between the fingers of his right hand to gain perspective and add depth to a vision already exhausted and blurred, beclouded in the dead of night, the mercenary waited silently for the nameless man; his pistol in his left hand was pointed to the sky, eager to be fired, desperately anticipating the moment when its projectile would kiss somebody else's skin in the deadliest of fashions.

An intense, piercing pain shook the gunslinger to his very core as the attacker assaulted him from behind, burying a knife mercilessly in Black's left hand; the cruel metal binding him with the young tree as his own blood and the sap emanating from the bark met to create a whole new substance. Pareedis punched Black's temple repeatedly, taking advantage of the mercenary's circumstantial immobility – The young tactician knew Black could end him with his eyes closed so the treacherous Outworlder was certain that restraining the marksman's moves was his only choice for survival.

Black struggled in pain as he tried to remove the knife from his damaged hand – but as Pareedis moved closer, the shimmering reflection of the mercenary's weapon caught his attention. The pistol, now resting on the ground, was a few inches away from the Outworlder's feet, its deadly menace was insistent and obscure like a mesmerizing mermaid song.

The young tactician kneeled down before the weapon and inspected it with curious eyes – his evident lack of experience with firearms was a surprising revelation for Black. Enduring the pain in his hand with a stoic demeanor, his eyes narrowed slightly in perfect concordance with the belligerent smirk behind his face mask:

"You never held one of those, right?" The air of superiority in his voice was subtle yet definitive.

Pareedis remained captivated by the enrapturing yet intriguing artifact as he raised an intrepid eyebrow to meet the weapon. The cold metallic surface of the pistol had several marks and scratches scattered randomly, each one of them was describing a close acquaintance to the mercenary's touch, an intimate relation between use and abuse, a signature of sorts - a metalinguistic definition all by itself. That weapon was an extension of Black himself; his fingers and the trigger were the same thing.

"It's quite the experience, you should know," Black went on as his eyes fixed on Pareedis' darkened gaze. "There's a weight to it, can you feel it? Of course, you can." Erron shifted slightly as his trapped hand was slowly, agonizingly starting to taste the unequaled sense of freedom and pain – the hunter, alive but wounded, was about to take control. "I'm not talking about the metal or the loaded rounds; you know the kind of weight I'm talking about, you perceive it," he went on, his speech distracting the Outworlder.

Finally freed from all restrictions, a sadistic Black towered over the still undaunted tactician:

"Feels right, huh?" The mercenary moved closer as Pareedis' hands began to shake – his trembling fingers were having a hard time trying to hold on to the weapon, "it's just like sex. Like the most perverted, warped, sickening kind of sex,"

Pareedis held his breath as he fruitlessly tried to aim for Black's head – he could listen to his own pulse resonating inside his head; the gun had a weight, Black was right. Only it was way too heavy for him to carry it and it showed, so Erron eyed the young man – that small, trembling figure standing right in front of him was the embodiment of the most futile of vulnerabilities: he wanted to be a man; but he was inexorably going to die a frightened child.

"But beware, young man, it can be addictive. And you know what they say; addictions can and will kill you,"

With those last words, Black jumped on top of Pareedis and retrieved his weapon from the young Outworlder's grasp; the jealousy of the marksman's itching hand welcoming back his beloved companion was reassuringly overwhelming – with his own blood dripping from the gun's handle, Black's wounded hand found its way to the trigger; the aim was perfect and certain – Pareedis' head fell back, motionless, as the bullet entered his mouth and exited his temple.

Black kneeled before the Outworlder's fresh corpse and spat a bitter, pinkish mixture of his own blood spicing up his saliva. This mission was indeed accomplished, but this was far from being enough. He sat beside the motionless remains of Aalem's assailant and collected his thoughts as he gathered the strength required to go back to the cabin: waving his hand in the emperor's balcony hadn't been enough; the rebel-seekers still believed that both Black and the Earthrealmer woman were in their debts. No, killing that treacherous man wouldn't suffice, he would have to choke the problem with his own bare hands to completely asphyxiate it, draining its vital essence from its very core.

He stood up as he shaped the idea inside his mind then bent over and held Pareedis' body from his swollen ankles: more than just being a mere award ribbon, the dead body of that disgusting young man held the potential to become a message, a savage souvenir for the mercenary to use and try to finally turn the tables.

Dragging the corpse with him, the mercenary made his way back to the cabin; the extra weight of his dead companion and the wound in his hand were more than just physical burdens: there was a certainty, a heavy thought reminding him that it was all his fault; that he should have ended that man the minute he sensed his presence lurking near the cabin, waiting, on the prowl – Now Aalem was paying the price for his indifference and his lack of commitment, the young Edenian was there, bleeding to death, because of his stupid impassivity.

Black took a deep breath and knocked on the cabin's door, a stern gesture of genuine preoccupation taking over his visage.

Knock, silence. Knock, knock, silence.

Knock, silence.

Knock, silence, knock.

"Come on in, Black," Alex yelled from the inside.

Still carrying Pareedis' body, Black entered the cabin – the image was disturbing: Alex had removed the dagger from Aalem's agonizing body and now the young Edenian's blood was splashed all over the wooden table; crimson drops were falling endlessly to the ground almost in slow motion and her face was now the face of despair and helplessness as the woman tried to help the boy with the few medical tools she had at her disposal.

 _I thought he would say something, not a speech but a thank you, you know? After saving his life._  She recalled instantly, as her eyes found the dead body now blocking the doorway.

"What? Why?" She asked, startled, as her mind struggled to find the right words.

"I'm gonna make a statement," Black replied bluntly.

"I thought you had already made one," her sarcasm was measured yet honest even though she had no clue what the mercenary had in mind this time.

"A clearer one," Black sentenced as he walked up to Aalem, "How's he holding up?"

"He is…" She began but couldn't go on: her eyes were fixed on the motionless body that had traveled back to the cabin alongside Black. "This man," she let out through clenched teeth, her lips barely moving, "he's the one who accused me, back in Z'unkahrah, he was the one behind my imprisonment - he's one of  _them_."

Black moved closer to the woman and placed his good hand on her shoulder – he understood that seeing that face again was a hard pill to swallow for Alex but now they had no time for regrets or distractions: Aalem needed them both. Alex nodded in silence; the message received, then went back to the young Edenian fighting for his life.

She was applying pressure to the unceasing streams of blood pouring from Aalem's chest when Black's eyes found the stained yet shiny golden coin resting carelessly on the table.

"What's this?" he asked, his eyes colder than ever, as he held up the coin with his fingers.

"The man; Aalem had it, I don't…" Alex stuttered, afraid of Black's reaction.

"How did this happen?" he demanded, "why did this asshole have this coin?" he asked as his index finger hovered over Pareedis' body. "I went to your cell and gave you the coins, what the hell happened after I left that day?"

"I forgot them," she replied shyly, frightened by Black's hardened expression.

"You what?"

"You left the door opened and I escaped, I didn't look back. The coins… it had forgotten all about them until now," she was embarrassed, Black could tell, her own carelessness had jeopardized everything. "When I saw that coin shinning in his hand…"

"You left the coins inside the cell?" Black investigated as the woman nodded. "Then this was an inside job," he concluded, but his elucubration was just too simplistic and too late to impress her.

"I told you, they are everywhere," she was mad at herself for being so stupid and, simultaneously, she was mad at Black for not noticing that the true recipient of her undivided attention was supposed to be Aalem. Frustration set on her eyes as she breathed in and out, exasperated.

"What?" The cowboy spat as he noticed her expression change.

"There're just too many goddamned things on this fucking table, there's no room for… I need… things that I… don't have; things that I should have," she was yelling helplessly as her bloodied hands were moving frantically in the air - impotence was getting the best of her. Black, exhausted and fed up, punched every single object on the table with his forearm: everything, from pencils to glasses fell down ruthlessly to the ground; the sounds made by the various different materials kissing the cabin's floor startled the woman.

"Better now?" The mercenary finished.

"Most of the few things I have – and I need… were there, scattered around your crap," she retorted madly– "you're not helping,"

The young Edenian's eyes went blank as his body began to shake uncontrollably – another seizure, the fourth one in less than an hour. The massive loss of blood was deteriorating the boy's wounded system: he was getting worse.

"What's happening to him?" Black asked naively even though deep down he could already anticipate the answer. His feet were pinned to the ground as terror started to take over him.

Alex ran off quickly to the mercenary's bedroom and came back only seconds later carrying blankets and clean sheets. She spread them on the floor and then, acknowledged by a steady sign from her right hand, Erron moved closer and helped her get the boy on the floor. She kneeled before Aalem as she tore a sheet and tried to use it as an improvised tourniquet.

Black's good hand was firm on the doctor's shivering shoulder – his voice; a solemn masquerade trying to conceal the fear paralyzing him ricocheted through the room:

"Is there anything you can do?"

Alex simply shook her head as the tears started to stream down her face.

The mercenary felt the heat of his cheeks aflame, the absolute helplessness of being there and not being able to do anything at all to help Dexitis' son was heartbreaking. He moved closer to the table and leaned his tired body on it, using his forearms not to fall down to the ground – he touched his own temples gently as the blood still pouring from his stabbed hand started to stream down the sides of his face, his fingers were numb; his mind was clouded with regret – he had made a promise and Aalem's imminent demise was his biggest failure, one more failure to add to his own blacklist.

Alex observed him from where she was, their eyes meeting in silence; sharing the deepest of sorrows.

"Kill him now," Back ordered through clenched teeth as he managed to rise from behind the battered wooden table. He was cupping his tortured fingers with his one good hand as the incessant stream of blood continued running down the full length of his extremity. He leaned forward, his weight resting on the table now, pushing it slightly – his vision, blurry and visibly out of focus was trying to find an anchor in Alex. He was panting heavily as drops of sweat were falling from his hair to his cheeks.

The woman looked away, trying to erase the words she had just heard but it was impossible – those words were there now, hovering between them, they had a weight and a meaning; they had a purpose. Alex's eyes found Black's again as she gazed minutely at him, absorbed and horrified by his command. Her hands were trembling, sweating in despair. She knew Aalem was in pain, she was a doctor, she had seen that sort of wounds before, she knew what was going to happen: Aalem was about to succumb to the most excruciating agony; there was nothing she could do to help – no matter how hard she tried, she knew she couldn't save the boy from his suffering, the poor child was condemned, he was going to die - yet his certain demise wasn't enough for her to become his executioner. She sat down on the floor before Aalem; tears were streaming down her face as she reached out to touch him, her hand removing the hair from his eyes, caressing his olive cheeks:

"He's just a kid," she pleaded, trying desperately to find Black's most compassionate side but knowing that her words had been aimed for deaf ears. Black was a cold man, a distant bastard incapable of experiencing any sense of guilt or remorse. In her eyes, he had turned into a dark being forever distanced from the warm, merciful human quality living inside any noble soul.

Black grunted as soon as he heard her words, exasperation starting to show all over his face. He understood Alex, he truly, honestly did. But that wasn't enough to delay the inevitable, he knew.

"No,  _you_  are just a kid. He's an Edenian; I bet he's old enough to be your father," he tried to persuade her. "Pull the trigger; put him out of his misery."

"I won't do it," Alex refused as she shook her head fervently.

"Pull the fucking trigger, woman, now!" His good hand was now a tight fist colliding frantically against the wooden table supporting his body.

"No," Alex said stubbornly as she shook her head once more.

"I've seen you kill a man before, don't be stupid and pull the damn trigger, he’s in pain," Black's words were a cold ultimatum threatening her senses.

"I'm not like you," she stood up cholericly as she walked up to him yet her menacing gaze was not enough to reach him.

"You're exactly like me, but you have yet to see it," with those words he placed himself behind her, his hip barely making contact with her waist. He was trying hard not to look at Aalem – even though it wasn't the first time he was about to end a suffering ally, deep down the mercenary knew such cruel, decisive moments carried a nauseating sourness impossible to taste even for the most insensible of palates.

The gun in his back holder was calling him on; summoning the hunter in him once again.

That thirst, he knew – there was only one way to quench it.

He grabbed his pistol and outstretched his arm embracing the woman lightly, then lifted her arm up, enveloping her extremity with his own. He guided her hand by placing his index finger upon hers, every pore of his skin was already acknowledging the proximity of the trigger that was about to be pulled.

Alex closed her eyes surreptitiously as her hand started to feel weaker – Black's demeanor and resolution were the only things holding her up, acting just like gravity, preventing her whole arm from falling back down. He pushed down her finger with his own; activating the deadly mechanism that would certainly end the young Edenian agonizing in front of them: the sound of the weapon being fired was like an eruption, corrupting everything in its way. The trajectory was accurate, deadly accurate even considering the fact that she had kept her eyes closed: the bullet impacted right between the boy's eyebrows, finishing him off instantaneously. Black had been the aim; he had inadvertently turned himself into a mathematical equation, a definitive, blunt and logical paradigm erasing Aalem from the surface of the most hostile of worlds.

The recoil and its physical impact were the closest approximation they had to inertia; as the sudden jolt tried to bring them back to reality.

But it wasn't enough for them to react: Aalem was gone.

Both Alex and Black lowered their heads simultaneously. It wasn't just a sign of respect but also a way to avoid facing an image so gruesome, so dark and dense that could drag them into the blackest of whirlpools. Aalem's dead body was the sentence they would have to face sooner or later yet they weren't ready to see it. They stood there as the smoking gun still chained their hands together - his undeniable skills and practices for murder were vivid, they were solid – he didn't just live up to his reputation.

He  _was_  his reputation.

She seethed even though no words were spoken. Black's arm was still surrounding her waist and now the stronghold of his body was monumentally heavy, preventing the woman from caving into the silent tension taking control of all her muscles and bones – was he trying to empathize with her after what he had done? Was he trying to comfort her, to console her? She turned around abruptly, realizing that he was not willing to let go and tried to fight her way out of his tight embrace with a temper tantrum, her stormy fists rising and colliding against his chest frantically, frenetically, as she cursed him. He said nothing, he knew he could take the pain as well as endure the helplessness and frustration she was throwing his way: after all she was just a frightened child wanting to go back home and he was an old wolf smelling that delicate, intoxicating perfume that can only be produced when salty tears get mixed with sweet blood – He knew he would never take her home but still, he had provided her with a roof over her head nonetheless; not that those words were synonyms - he was familiar with both meanings and even now, more than a century away from home and already witnessing the flashing lights waiting on the horizon of his nearly bicentennial existence, he was still lucid enough to tell the difference between a house and a home - but that was all he could do for her and, in his eyes, it was more than enough.

Yet he understood the pain she was enduring – he recognized that hollowing feeling as his own turmoil found its perfect match inside her saddened eyes.

He embraced her with his both arms, not caring about the blood staining his skin or his swollen, almost anesthetized fingers - even as numb and perplexed as he was, he was clearly affected by Aalem's death, they both were, but in a corner of his twisted mind he understood that the woman needed that moment of complete silence and devoted comprehension: she wasn't just mourning Aalem, she was mourning Harry as well, she was venting off steam after being lied to, captured, almost killed by those same hands holding her close now – now she was a fugitive hiding in the confines of a world that wasn't even hers and her whole life had become an extension, an accessory of the mercenary she clearly despised. His cowboy hat, his dusty boots, his countless bullets,  _his doctor_. It was all the same; there was no true difference. She had been reduced to just being a tool; an instrument for his own amusement or, in the rarest of occasions, his suffocating, sickening carousel of misplaced emotions and desires. He held her close as her tears fell down from her face to his own arms: that crystalline waterfall was a reverberation in itself – those teardrops were telling stories about her mother, her father, her boyfriend; or perhaps just the occasional lover that would be waiting for her on some other distant place. Those tears were revealing her inner codecs, the landmarks of her embittered life now irreversibly secluded inside his box full of memories. Like that hair ribbon, or those old, sandy photographs; there she was, living in his wooden cabin. And that was all there was for her.

He leaned his head on her shoulder for support – he was mourning the boy too, after all. He had made a promise to Dexitis and the outcome was tragic: now the son was about to be reunited with his long-lost father. Black covered his own face with his one good hand and took a deep breath before finally saying:

"You did the right thing,"

She punched him hard in the face instinctively, his mask absorbing most of the impact as his now stern gaze accompanied hers; it encompassed her as the woman took a deep breath and placed her aching hand over his face mask, her fingers traveling up and down the openings in the brown leather imprisoning his nose and mouth. Then she broke down and cried, her tormented face was buried in his shoulder as she wept, pulling him close with fistfuls of him and his clothes. Black cupped her trembling hand with his own damaged digits as rivulets of his blood started to contaminate her skin gradually. The heartbroken mercenary kept his head down the whole time as if trying to avoid eye contact: he was afraid of what he could find if he dared wander and explore inside those stranded, reddened eyes raining in front of him. She moved slightly under his grip as if protesting against that sudden understanding - that unimaginable, lugubrious intimacy that was now being shared between them. Her eyes, cloaked in shadows, were bluntly neglecting the sudden fondness the mercenary was projecting towards her.

His were obscure methods, she concluded as she realized that his most beautiful colors could only be seen right after his darkest, thickest tones. Like  _that_ night, she remembered, his fragile stability was dominating her, making her fall in his own twisted gravity.

Alex let out a soft breath as she gathered the determination she had lacked all along ever since meeting that bastard. She pushed him away with all her strength as the uncomfortable despotism in her eyes startled him like never before:

"Move aside, you son of a bitch."


	13. Elegy

He landed on his butt, ashamed, feeling like a vulnerable and anguished child. He rolled his eyes in discontent as his eyelids discovered how those unpitying pupils challenging him now seemed incredibly bigger from the daunting, cold ground - he was making an effort trying to be nice and attentive but it seemed rudeness was all he would be getting in return. Those reckless arms that had pushed him away were now distant harbors observing him from an invisible, unreachable pedestal. Those corrosive and impersonal eyes damaging him like piercing daggers were eager to be challenged by his untamable ways once again. Those menacing eyes were lighthouses on fire, he thought.

Erron Black took a deep breath as the sound of his uneven respiration enveloped him, detaching him briefly from the world itself – it resounded all around him like a mad tune on a sickening loop. He swallowed, as his craving gaze tried to reach for those eyes deconstructing him brutally: he knew better, after all.

He stood up slowly and brushed his buttocks with his sweaty, nervous hands. He was ready to give it another go, like a wrathful bull seeing red.

"I said move aside, you  _son of a bitch_!" – that maddened voice scolded him again, the final elocution was enough to make him shudder like a toddler.

Those arms had indeed rejected him again. The sound of that vicious voice, now echoing louder than before, was massaging his troubled ears with the cruelest of words.

_Son of a bitch._

Ever since he could remember, he had had a problem with those words, especially when used together, especially when referring to his mother. He knew it was a mere figure of speech; a hurting illusion created by the imaginary of entire societies separating the good from the bad, the pristine from the mundane, the acceptable from the unacceptable yet those words felt like a fatal spear impaling him every time.

Even though he had never doubted the obvious fact stating that he was smart enough not to get confused by the literacy of such unfortunate wording, a part of him had always had a hard time separating the actual meaning behind those heavy words from the assumption of what they all thought about his mother. He had learned to live among such scummy people yet those words had always taken its toll on him.

"I got this covered, kid. Thanks for the help, though," the experienced saloon bartender said as he helped the boy up.

Erron frowned virulently, as he watched good old Jacob's quiet, unnerving expression talking the man down with the prestige of a professional – The bartender simply walked up to the choleric Mr. Nathaniel Taggart and invited the banker, as politely and amicably as humanly possible, to come back inside the saloon for yet another drink. Jacob's clever ways were displayed with such simplicity and poise that it made it seem as if dealing with any of those so-called  _men of substance_  was no more than a children's game: putting up with drunken patrons was not that hard after all; a still-bewildered Erron concluded as he recalled the amazingly simple instructions the bartender had given him a long time ago:  _As long as the saloon is open, if they want another drink, you just keep 'em coming, boy._

The man was grieving, they all knew that. Rumor had it that Nathaniel hadn't always been such a messed up man. He had just lost his wife and now he was trying desperately to find solace in the comfort of strangers. He had become the newest addition to the saloon's sacred family of loyal patrons. But things were disastrous every time he was around – the man didn't know when to stop, he was a complete amateur – he was an upper class, aristocratic banker trying to fit in among farmers and working-class neighbors. He had never even bothered to learn their names and now he was trying to sympathize with them; longing for empathy and understanding by exposing miserably the most private pillars of his sorrow.

In their eyes, he was just another hypocrite, high-class parasite desperately seeking everyone's attention.

The pouring rain was gradually gluing his clothes to his barely experienced skin; the cold shower raining from the sky was soothing for his senses, slowly calming him down. The fourteen-year-old took a deep breath as the bartender and the troubled Mr. Taggart reentered the saloon. As their figures disappeared, a brand new one captivated the boy still standing in the middle of that godforsaken street. Her apparition, sublime and unprecedented, felt like tasting a fresh drop of water after walking endlessly through a merciless desert.

The girl, deliciously wrapped up in a navy blue cape, was standing near the saloon's front porch, trying to find shelter from the rain. He had never seen her before yet he envisioned himself seeing her for all eternity.

She let out a soft groan as she noticed the young boy staring awkwardly at her. She was clearly mad at her father and not only because her old man had just made a scene in the middle of the street: the engulfing reproach contained in her gaze had deeper roots; it was unmistakably revealing that the girl was angry at her old man for spending so much time drinking himself to oblivion and for warming up his bed with countless strangers right after losing his wife.

 _Grief –_ Erron pondered silently, _funny how it can make people go crazy_.

She walked up to the door right after her tormented father, the devil was driving her. She stood in the door frame then placed her hands at the sides of her waist and yelled: "Don't you think you've had enough? You could save yourself the embarrassment, old man." Erron couldn't help but notice her rictus aggravated and serious, and that tender image of such a young lady already acting as a thoughtful adult, swimming courageously in an unstable sea of contrived responsibilities, was enough to let a small grin curl up his lips – it wasn't the first time that an angry daughter or wife would try their best to get their men back home yet there was something special about her. Something he was already cherishing, his heart filled with unparalleled anticipation.

Something quite unique.

"Mind your own business, child," the banker said coldly, without even looking at his formidable daughter. He couldn't risk wasting any more time now that he was already too amused in the company of three saloon girls willingly trying to share a table with him. The girl let out a sigh full of frustration and retreated to the sheltering front porch, helplessly cursing under her breath.

She sat on the little wooden stair made by only three narrow treads at the entrance of the saloon; her shivering hands were resting on her lap as her fingers toyed unceasingly with each other.  _Cold and uneasy_ ; Black thought,  _never a good combination_. After taking a short pause to regain his composure and find his incipient sense of bravery, Erron finally followed her. He sat down by her side as his curious eyes deconstructed her pristine image: her skin was pale and there were freckles scattered all across her cheeks. She had big, blue eyes that provided quite the beautiful vanishing point for a visage framed by long and wavy auburn - almost orange - hair.  _Of Irish descent_ , he concluded instantly. She stopped toying with her own fingers as the creases of her large cape covered her hands; his presence was now being acknowledged by those big blue eyes staring at him for the first time:

"In all honesty… he wants to sleep with the singer; not the fat one that only sings when no-one's around to listen," the girl began, interrupting his contemplative reverie, "the cute one."

The young boy couldn't disguise his surprise: of all the things she could have said, that one, in particular, carried a peculiar sting. His bewildered eyes were in perfect concordance with his half-open mouth. The most obvious of truths was being released through his wide-eyed gaze and the rigid lines of his face were exposing that uncomfortable feeling that only  _that_  assumption could bring.

"She's my mother," he revealed, completely in shock after learning about the banker's impure intentions.

The unexpected revelation was jaw-dropping for the girl who was now unable to look away, trying to find the missing resemblance between that boy sitting right next to her and the glorious, diaphanous singer she had seen some time ago.

"For real? Is she?" The girl finally managed to ask, still skeptical and incredulous. "No offense," she added in a heartbeat, realizing that her words had the potential required to upset that boy, her eyes were now softening the severity in her tone as her left hand found its way to his shoulder.

She tapped it gently, conciliatorily, then quickly hid her cold hand under the cape again.

"None taken," the boy shrugged, as his lips were helplessly curling themselves up again, "they all say I don't look anything like her."

The girl smirked, timidly, as her eyes started to trace invisible lines linking the son with the mother. There was something distinctive about his eyes; that dark and inexplicably cold shade of brown that looked so much like coffee – but that wasn't it. There was something else about his facial features – she had seen it before.  _The singer_ , she recalled after a brief moment of contemplation as she nodded silently to herself, narrowing her eyes as an attempt to create the simulated illusion of having those seemingly different faces juxtaposed inside her mind.

Perhaps he  _was_  the singer's child after all; the girl considered after taking her time to finally find some matching features between those faces. Some of the singer's expressions were there, very much alive in that face of his; inside those eyes staring right back at her now.

"I'm Erron, by the way," he introduced himself as he outstretched his hand, eager to shake hers. There was no true need for confirmation: he knew that girl was Amanda Taggart's daughter, the resemblance was unmistakable - she looked exactly like her recently deceased mother.

"Amanda," the girl replied immediately as their clumsy fingers met in a polite gesture of recognizing the other for the first time. He offered her a sumptuous half-smile, even though involuntarily, as he nodded:

"Well, nice to meet you, Mandy."

Time itself stopped as Amanda's beautiful visage got partially clouded by a thick halo of sadness. "Amanda. Never Mandy," the girl corrected him abruptly. There had only been one Mandy – her mother, and she was already gone. No one, not even her homonymous only daughter was allowed to take her place now, no matter if that intransitive, ghostly place only consisted in the seemingly naïve, inoffensive appropriation of the late woman's innocuous  _Mandy_.

Erron felt a shiver running down his spine as his own cold sweat, combined with his still-wet clothes, started to contaminate his skin with goosebumps: there was a wall inside those eyes staring right back at him and no matter how tall, he was willing to climb it.

"He's been waiting for your mother to show up, seems he's running out of luck," Amanda said calmly, trying to soften her voice as she realized that the sweet boy sitting right next to her was not responsible for her predicament. He didn't know, after all. How was he supposed to know?

"She hasn't performed this week yet, she hasn't been feeling alright lately," Erron explained patiently, suddenly at ease again. Those mood swings of hers were inexplicably powerful, he thought – they could drag him down or lift him up and he would just follow them, helpless, like a solitary leaf succumbing to the sometimes periling, sometimes soothing winds of change.

The same halo of sorrow that had clouded her face before had set on his pensive visage now. Amanda reached out for him and cupped his hands with her own; the magical bond of empathy was finally shining through. The first symptoms of cirrhosis were already showing, and they were certainly about to unleash the cruel process of consuming Erron's talented mother in no time. Little by little, the decease would begin to restrain her, ultimately corrupting everything in its way. Yet the first symptoms hadn’t been that much of an alarm for them – they all thought the woman was tired, or maybe just food poisoned; it was going to take a few more months for them to face the inevitable truth: Erron's mother was going to die; she would soon be joining Amanda's mother in an irreversible fate and those doomed women's children, the future orphans of that tragic turn of events, wouldn't even have each other during that difficult time.

The warmth of her hands felt soothing and genuine. Erron smiled, as the spark in her eyes helped him get over that uncertain, futuristic solitude he had been anticipating for quite some time now.

"Anyway, my mother doesn't do that," the boy shook his head fervently as he finally let go of Amanda's hands. He wasn't a stranger to his mother's reputation nor was it the first time that someone was suggesting his incredibly talented mother could do so much more than just perform in front of an audience yet the boy still refused to believe in those rumors.

"Do what?" Amanda asked naively.

"Sleep with men," Erron answered, simply.

"And how do you think you were conceived?" The girl inquired smartly, surprising him with an obvious reasoning. Such simplistic train of thought startled him abruptly, and soon he found himself struggling to find a proper, clever answer.

"She slept with one man," the boy retorted after a while, resolute. He was not a virgin anymore, Jessica and her nocturnal lessons had suffocated the little ingenuity that was left in him. He  _knew_  what he was talking about. He was no stranger to that life yet that fact wasn't enough for him to see his own mother  _that way_. Even though his precarious manhood had already been summoned by Jessica's tantalizing methods; the young Texan boy was still a defenseless pawn to his own twisted innocence when it came to his mother.

"One man," Amanda started to think out loud, "and just once," the girl laughed softly, unable to hide the ridiculousness of that nearly impossible scenario. Her gesture was light, pure, though her tone was grumpily mimicking his. "You're funny," she let out softly and now her smile was broad and livid, there was a life afire captured inside that spirit of hers. She was a vision; his vision – the vision of a world so unbearably alive it could drag him inside that carousel-like whirlpool of perfect moments when words are no longer a burden to carry.

His laughter mirrored hers for a brief moment as their cheerful voices boasted innocently through the Arroya night. That first encounter, forever treasured inside the mercenary's dearest memories, would be enough for the boy to finally understand that there was more to life than getting lost in someone else's body. That initial communion, magical and everlasting, was a promise of a brighter, better future for the two of them though little they knew back then about the difficult road they were about to embark themselves upon.

"Amanda, home,” the drunken banker interrupted them as the girl's old man exited the place. Nathaniel was leaving the saloon again, this time, finally calling it a night. Amanda gazed back at Erron, her embarrassment was barely concealed behind long eyelashes and pinkish cheeks as the girl struggled to find an understanding inside that boy's noble eyes. Erron nodded, as he stood up slowly and offered her his hand – she took it, as she grinned back at him tenderly, acknowledging the incipient gentleman already existing inside that lovely kid she had just met.

"Amanda," the banker's threatening look was persistent even though the man was clearly having a hard time trying to stay on his unbalanced feet. "Home. Now."

The girl obeyed quietly as she nodded one more time, rather awkwardly, and walked towards her father. As the drunken widower and his magnificent auburn-haired daughter disappeared in the misty atmosphere reigning through the rainy night, a young and barely experienced Erron Black stood still in the front porch. His untamable eyes kept on blinking unceasingly, as if taking her picture.

His eyes were the shutter of an invisible camera; allowing his mind to recreate that lovely visage of hers. With each one of those pictures taken by simply blinking his eyes, he would construct her delicate figure made by light and shadow - yet the real chiaroscuro of his life had only just begun.

* * *

 Arc II

Chapter XIII

**Elegy**

**(Eight Short Stories About a Girl Called Amanda, in a Town Called Arroya)**

* * *

 " _Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time."_

― Jorge Luis Borges

" _If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets."_

― Haruki Murakami

_"No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories."_

— Haruki Murakami

* * *

  **I – A Lovely Green Hair Ribbon**

_November 7th, 1857_

* * *

"You should go," Jessica said as she rose from the bed, her naked curves were rapidly welcoming the midday chill in a house that had been locked up for far too long – the secrecy of the closed blinds and locked doors was secluding the forbidden couple from the dangers of the world outside that room. The fourteen-year-old still scattered around the messy bedsheets watched her in silence, admiring her familiar yet always desired figure.

"Erron, you really have to go now." She repeated as she looked over her shoulder to find the boy staring sheepishly at her. Her voice was almost pleading him to get dressed and leave the place. He knew the deal; after all, there was no need for lingering around any longer.

Erron nodded, understanding her potential predicament and taking it as his own, as he sat on Jessica's bed. The woman was putting on her white underskirt as the boy, still absorbed by her mundane sense of beauty, got up slowly and began the mandatory task of searching for his clothes in a room he knew too damn well to pretend he was clueless about the whereabouts of his belongings. Sex during the daytime was a rare, occasional delight for the peculiar lovers and so it was treasured; even cherished by the both of them. The living embodiment of a tabula rasa that had lived in the shape of that trembling twelve-year-old child in the larder was no more. Thanks to her experienced body, he was now an evolved lover. Her hunger and his hunger were the same reciprocal need and now adjectives such as  _attentive_ ,  _gentle_  and  _caring_  were finally good enough to describe his development as a completed man, fully in control of his amorous endeavors.

"Can I ask you something?" Erron inquired as he put on his trousers, jumping clumsily on one foot.

"It's almost lunch break," she turned around to face the boy and explained, even though she knew the kid was no stranger to that frightening statement, "Adrian should be home any minute now, Erron." Jessica went on as she dismissed him absentmindedly; then she stood in front of the mirror and began brushing her long, wavy blond hair: she had no time to deal with his doubts and questions. Not now.

"Please," the boy begged with puppy eyes.

"Alright," the woman agreed with evident apathy as she turned around once more to face the inquisitive young man that would not leave her house. "What is it? Is it about that girl?"

 _That girl_ , the one that had invaded all his thoughts and speeches since that rainy night, that girl he hadn't seen in over a month – yes,  _that girl_. She was well acquainted with anyone but him apparently. Everybody knew her.  _Even Jessica knew her_.

"How come you know Amanda?" He demanded quickly, mildly surprised.

"Erron…" Jessica sighed with a certain tenderness, "thank God you're a handsome, good-looking boy," the woman bleated helplessly as she approached the fourteen-year-old and caressed his still-naked, bony shoulders. "Boy, it's cities like this one," she began, "these small towns have a whole system, you know, to prevent  _girls like her_  from meeting little rascals _like you_ ," Jessica chided, "take her father, for example: the man's a banker. Yours," she stopped abruptly, not wanting to hurt the perplexed young boy now staring right back at her. "Perhaps that's not a good comparison," she thought out loud after a moment as she lit up a cigar. "Let's see, her mother was an angel. Amanda Taggart was a caring wife and mother, everybody knew the woman, everybody  _loved_  her.  _Your_  mother… now, don't get me wrong, kid. I love Jo – but the best thing I have to say about her… well, she's a very talented singer."

 _She's an alcoholic that hates your guts_.

Jessica's hands were moving frantically now, making all sorts of pompous signs to further illustrate her words: "The Taggart house is big and beautiful - it's a home, Erron.  _Your_  house is the back room of a decadent building somewhere in between a saloon and a brothel." She raised a definitive eyebrow, sensing the argument reaching its end quite prematurely. "Need I say more?"

Erron shook his head. Of course, he was well aware of his own precarious situation; he  _knew_  all those things yet he didn't care in the slightest: he wasn't looking for easy comparisons or obvious examples, he was seeking help.

"But if you were me, what would you do?" He asked, grinning shyly at her, looking for some tacit comradeship.

"I won't sugar coat it for you, boy - I'd watch her pass by." She answered gravely.

Her hips kept moving as she walked towards the door, indicating the boy that it was time to leave, no more excuses, no more delays. The cadence of her body and its pace felt like waves in a restless ocean as she turned around to face him one last time: "Forget about Amanda, Erron. She will make you suffer, whether you like it or not. Shake yourself out of all this while you still can. She's no good for you." Jessica said as she trapped the cigar, mercilessly, between her tight lips.

"What makes you so sure?" Erron asked with narrowed eyes as he was about to leave. That woman's touch, now tucking his hair behind his ears, was making him feel as if he had been swimming through fire.

"Because she's a good girl, Erron," Jessica answered, simply, her voice was somewhat condescending now. "and good girls do not hook up with boys  _like you_."

Erron lowered his head as he let out a soft sigh – his lover's words were branding him like scorched metal, damaging his skin for good.

As he left Jessica's house, Adrian's figure became clearly visible right around the corner. The boy hurried up instinctively, even when he knew he was already out of sight and made his way back to the saloon; his mind was racing with a million thoughts and considerations regarding Jessica's rather discouragingly, eloquent words – the certainty she had imprinted on such seemingly asserted premonitions surfaced abruptly to corrupt his shadowed tranquility: deep down he knew his secret lover had a point, but what if the woman was completely, absolutely right?

Still, no matter how many nights he would stay awake, his mind drifting away trying to find Amanda's lovely visage among his most precious memories, truth was that the girl was nowhere to be found.

Arroya wasn't that big of a town, after all, he thought – only 200 inhabitants, most of them farmers. Erron knew he would get to see Amanda again someday, it was just an inevitable matter of time, yet a whole month had passed and her absence was indelibly imprinted on her own rhetorical presence. The precarious city was centered around the courthouse and the town square; such neuralgic places he had wandered endlessly during that dry month in the useless search for that petite young lady that had caught his eye. But she was nowhere to be seen and her sepia-colored memory, contemplated through the unbearable distance brought by time itself alone, was getting bigger and bigger with each passing day.

He entered the saloon and sat on a stool behind the bar where he stayed until the very notion of time began to fade. Midday welcomed a soporific afternoon and then evening rolled into just another night - yet he stayed there, almost motionless, sketching her adored face with a pencil on a million ruined napkins, trying his best to exercise his memories of her – her precious smile, her solemn frown, her wide-eyed gaze so full of surprise; her every gesture was now archived in his private collection of stolen images. A shadow towered over the boy but he didn't notice,

"Jacob, my friend, is she singing tonight?" A familiar voice startled him.

Mr. Nathaniel Taggart was standing right in front of him, asking about his mother just like every night – ashamed, like a pagan caught during some sublime act of twisted faith, the boy tried to hide the napkins with his own bony elbows as Jacob, the bartender, smiled and nodded at Amanda's father, noticing the young boy blushing and sweating nervously right next to him.

"She's getting ready to perform," Jacob said, trying to get Erron off the hook. "Same table, same drink?"

Mr. Taggart nodded quietly as his avid eyes watched Jacob already getting an unopened bottle of wine and signaling some of the saloon girls to accompany the man to his table. Erron stayed there, the napkins barely concealed underneath his trembling elbows and forearms, his blank expression was unreadable yet the man still standing in front of him tapped his fingers on the wooden bar and said:

"You got her nose wrong, son," the man winked, but it was a gesture Erron couldn't just place: was it condescending? Was it expressing unspoken complicity? Or was it simply just another amusement for the troubled widower?

Erron blushed again as he observed the delighted Mr. Taggart grinning softly at him – the mockery of the gesture was palpable now, yet Nathaniel's serene elocution was enough for the boy to hesitate whether he should ask the father about the magnificent daughter or not. The boy frowned, unsure yet quite restless. He stood up; finally, ready to approach the man when a heavy burden started to pin him down to the stool he had just abandoned only seconds ago.

"Don't," Jacob murmured quite solemnly, anticipating Erron's thoughts. The bartender eyed the boy sternly and placed his big hands on Erron's still shivering shoulders. "There's no need to," he explained, as one of his hands signaled the boy that there was someone else waiting by the door. The old bartender smiled, satisfied, as he said: "Come on in, darling, don't be shy. It's getting late for a lovely young lady like you to wait outside," Jacob's fatherly voice was soothing. He patted Erron's shoulder gently, reassuring the boy that there was no need for him to face the father. The daughter had appeared; finally, and her sole presence was enough for Erron's pensive frown to melt into a smile.

The girl stepped inside the saloon and approached the bar timidly as her father was escorted to his table by three of the saloon's girls. She acknowledged the bartender with a simple nod and said, in a serious tone:

"Did you see the state he was in last night?" She pointed an explicitly judgmental index finger at her own father who was now sitting with four saloon girls, one of them, giggling cheerfully on her old man's lap. "Well, I'm not waiting around anymore. If things get messy, I'm taking him home." Her gaze had been hardened by intolerance: she was visibly tired of putting up with his shit. Her eyes found Erron, as the boy stayed paralyzed behind the bar. His incredulous eyes could not believe the miraculous apparition they were witnessing. He had imagined that moment for so long; he had rehearsed that second encounter so many times inside his mind that now that it was finally happening, he was clueless about what to do.

Amanda's face, incandescent and illuminated by the boy's unmeasurable, silent worship, offered him a tender smile as the gallant boy invited the girl of his dreams to sit beside him behind the bar. Amanda accepted as Erron helped her. He placed another stool beside his and signaled the girl to sit. She was wearing a green dress, barely visible from behind the brown suede cape placed upon her shoulders. There were two lovely matching green hair ribbons embellishing her auburn ponytail.

"Hi," she greeted the boy with a half-smile as she sat down.

Erron stretched one of his arms, willing to shake her delicate hand once again but the girl looked away all of a sudden, embarrassed, as her sight discovered the raw yet quite detailed sketches the boy had been hiding under his elbow. The fourteen-year-old boy blushed helplessly, as he started fidgeting under a thick halo of nerve-wracking, gratuitous exposure.

The bartender chuckled as he sensed the uncomfortable situation repressing the youngsters. No matter how many things he had taught Erron it was clear that the "How to stay calm when the girl you like is right next to you" lesson would be next on the list.

Amanda's eyes wandered the place, trying to find an anchor that would help her get rid of that awkward tension separating her ashamed self from Erron. As her sight traveled, oblivious, cruising through all those foreign faces of saloon girls and patrons, she looked at her father and their mirrored, bridged gazes felt so heavy she couldn't help but to look down, the disapproval in her father's eyes was enough to make her see that she was unwelcome. Ashamed by Erron's silent admiration and tormented by her own father's public rejection, the girl felt like sinking in an unfathomable, restless ocean of contrived emotions.

"Can I offer you a drink, sweetheart?" Jacob said as he approached her, noticing the girl was having a hard time.

"I don't drink." She said tenderly.

"I can offer you water, then," the bartender insisted.

"That would be fine," Amanda replied sweetly.

Jacob's gaze traveled from Amanda to Erron, then the bartender stood behind the boy and leaned closer, his face now occupying the empty space between their still-blushing faces: "From one Black to another," he was looking at Amanda now, but even though the girl was clearly listening to his every word the old man paid no mind and went on anyway, "she's a keeper, boy." Jacob winked and smiled as he patted their shoulders gently; satisfied with his benevolent intromission, then he headed towards the other end of the bar where more patrons were waiting for him.

Erron's cheekbones were aflame; he shifted on his stool involuntarily as Amanda grinned shyly at him. Silence enveloped them awkwardly until the girl finally found the courage to speak again:

" _From one Black to another_? Is he your father?" She asked, curious, as she poured herself a glass of water.

"No, he is not," the boy said in a low tone as he shook his head vigorously, trying to provide his rather simplistic answer with a little more certainty.

"Right, he's too old to be your father. Then… is he your grandfather, maybe?" Amanda raised an inquisitive eyebrow, eager to unveil the young boy's mystery.

"No." His darkened gaze found hers. Erron didn't want to talk about his father – and not only because the story held the required intensity to definitely scare her away but because going back there still represented that laconic act of submitting himself to a never-ending source of unprecedented suffering. Amanda read his saddened expression like an open book and drank her water in silence; her lips were subtly incarcerating her questions and doubts.

A familiar figure eyed the boy from the other side of the bar. Erron was trying so hard not to get swallowed by the tourbillon of his own story that he didn't notice the woman approaching them – she rested her forearms on the table and asked:

"Where's your mother? She should be performing by now."

Erron shrugged as his eyes found Jessica's staring incredulously in Amanda's direction: "Why don't you go to your room, check on her, see if she's alright?" the woman suggested rather mischievously. It was true that Josephine was late again, but deep down the boy knew there was something more – he knew Jessica like the back of his hand: she was quite territorial, she was not that altruistic. The woman grinned, as she realized that the boy was not going to abandon his place beside Amanda: to him, her true intentions would always shine through her thoughtful façade of loving concern.

"I'm sure she'll be here any minute now," Erron replied, making it clear that he was not going to give her the opportunity to be alone with his precious Amanda.

"I'm sure she will," Jessica smirked, then the woman returned her full attention to the blue-eyed girl sitting right next to her secret lover – "Aren't you going to introduce us?" she asked the boy, with her viper-like eyes still glued to the Taggart girl. Of course, she knew who that girl was yet she wasn't going to waste the opportunity to embarrass Erron while trying to prove her point: he wasn't good enough for Amanda. He belonged there, in that filthy redoubt somewhere in between a saloon and a brothel having sex with a married woman that didn't need the attention nor the passionate loving he could offer - but the amusement; the superiority of positioning herself in the zenith of a carnal, coaxing empowerment had the potential she craved: she had manufactured that boy; she had made him the man he had become – she was the indomitable goddess ruling his universe, and she wasn't going to give him up without a fight.

"Jess, Mr. Harrison is looking for you, the same table as usual – seems like Mary's giving him a hard time again," Jacob interrupted, saving the boy from the impending embarrassment waiting for him. The bartender placed his arm over Jessica's shoulder as he walked her to the assigned table. The woman protested, visibly unhappy with the old man's intromission.

"She's gonna make him suffer, Jake," Erron and Amanda heard her say as she walked away. Erron narrowed his eyes as his mind began to struggle, trying to understand Jessica's erratic behavior.

"It's good to know your friends are concerned about your wellbeing," Amanda let out shyly, as she started to play childishly with her own fingers.

"I suppose so," the confused boy confessed as he looked down, still feeling intrigued by Jessica's changing attitude.

Was it because Amanda was younger than her? Prettier than her, perhaps? Was it because he had positively chosen the girl instead of just being dragged down into a mad, uncontrollable whirlpool of desire and secrecy? Or was it because the girl didn't have that ulterior need of feeling superior, of feeling in control? Was it because she was afraid that, in case things progressed as he hoped and desired with Amanda, he would ultimately abandon her, burying her lascivious presence under a thick halo of mutual correspondence with somebody else, somebody that could unmistakably be seen as his equal?

Erron raised his stranded eyes to find Josephine already on stage, almost ready to perform. The sight of his talented mother taking over the scene was enough to warm him up inside: he had always treasured those brief instants. While performing, his mother would search for him through the faceless crowd, she would look at him with her sparkling eyes full of love and complicity; the bridge between them would be one of a taciturn yet certain nature – it was only then, during those glorious moments shared by the artist in the spotlight and her neglected offspring witnessing her breath-taking transformation from afar, when the look on her face would welcome him as the son that he was. She hated him most of the time, of that he had no doubts. But she loved him during those brief twenty minutes of unique, silent bonding.

He was no stranger to that tiring dichotomy he had been forced to live with. But he loved her anyway - deeply. And no matter how hard it was to coexist with that woman during his days, their nights were an absolutely different reality.

"She's very talented." Amanda sentenced, observing the boy as he got carried away by Jo's beautiful, melodic voice. The timid witness sitting right by his side smiled wholeheartedly at Erron as her cold hands traveled the distance separating them and cupped his fingers with her own, her gentle touch becoming a quiet bond between the two of them.

"Do _you_  have any talents?" She asked.

"I hunt toads," the boy began, shyly, still enraptured by his mother's magic, "but I don't know if that counts as a talent."

"I don't think it does," Amanda chuckled as she shook her head delicately.

"Hey, Jo," Mr. Taggart yelled as he stood up, interrupting the song, "how about an exchange?" He was drunk again, and the saloon girls sharing the table with him were covering their faces with their sweaty hands, too embarrassed to face Jo's incredulous expression. "Your child can have my child," he continued as he glanced over the petrified children eyeing him suspiciously from the bar, "as long as I have you, your filthy son can drill my daughter as much as he wants," he concluded, raising his glass to celebrate an invisible, unwelcomed toast.

Erron opened his mouth to try and defend both Jo's and Amanda's wounded honor but he wasn't the only one feeling that it was high time someone put the rude, scummy man in his place - the unjustifiable Mr. Taggart had a lesson to learn:

"We're trying to listen, you moron," another patron yelled back, his loud and masculine voice cruised violently across the room. Mr. Harrison, the short-tempered farmer had finally expressed his discomfort.

"Fuck me," Mr. Taggart retorted carelessly before going back to Josephine, "you're one fine woman, Jo," he went on, his voice louder than before - he was tracing an invisible silhouette with his shaky hands when a visibly altered Mr. Harrison walked up to his table and ordered the girls to leave.

Another annoyed patron stood up as well and made his way to Mr. Taggart's table – without saying a single word, his curled up first baptized yet another bar brawl. Amanda's father, surrounded, was at the receiving end once again, but this time, not only Josephine was feeling embarrassed and angry: Amanda's eyes, glued to his battered father, were praying for the unnecessary and totally avoidable nightmare to be over. Erron struggled silently as he watched his mother's discontent and Amanda's shameful disapproval. Nathaniel Taggart was a piece of work, he concluded, yet those women in distress were compelling him to act on their behalf, to do  _something_ ;  _anything_ , to make it all go away.

Instinctively, Erron jumped over the bar and made his way to the center of the fight, dodging bare-knuckle brawlers, airborne kicks and flying chairs – God, it was _home_. The kid dashed as he put his arms around Nathaniel's shoulders, sheltering him from the incoming punch aiming for one of the man's temples. Mr. Taggart ducked under Erron's clumsy grasp but the boy, stunned by all the bumping and pushing around him, wasn't fast enough to dodge the unstoppable force of the raging fist – he landed on his butt, his legs were clumsily scattered among broken wooden chairs. Josephine urged herself back to the center of the stage and clapped her hands together as loudly as humanly possible as an attempt to catch everyone's attention but to no avail: no-one seemed to notice her now, no-one cared enough to look at her now that the thrilling sense brought by all that bottled up violence was enrapturing every single man in that room. The woman sighed, as her eyes found Amanda's bewildered yet somehow determined expression: his son's new friend was jumping over the bar as well now, trying to reach for her father. Her tiny figure moved across the saloon quite easier than her son; there was no need for the girl to dodge any incoming attacks - she was precise enough for her pace to guide her safely through the chaos. Once she was in front of Nathaniel, the young lady slapped her father's face with such fury that everyone around them stopped altogether – their motionless bodies were now paralyzed by the girl's unparalleled determination.

"We're leaving," Amanda ordered as she pushed her father towards the door. Then she turned around and searched for Jo, with eyes so wildly belligerent that any other patron wouldn't have dared stand in her way. "I'm sorry," The girl muttered, feeling ashamed that her troublesome father had been the sole manufacturer of such an embarrassing moment.

Erron stood up, still feeling dazed and dizzy thanks to the punch that had shaken every vertebra in his slender neck, and left the saloon as well. He ran as fast as he could to accompany the Taggarts on their awkward way back home: he wanted to make sure they weren't being followed by any offended patrons in need of a more extensive retribution.

"Are you alright?" Amanda asked with genuine concern as she turned around to face her nearly out of breath friend, "you'll wake up with a black eye tomorrow."

"It's alright; it's not my first rodeo." Erron sentenced as he put his arms underneath Nathaniel's armpits to help the girl carry the weight of her wasted father. The smell of blood and alcohol was truly nauseating; even for the saloon boy.

The kid walked them home in complete silence, noticing Amanda's temper about to explode every time the girl would dare look at her own father. The few blocks separating the Taggart house from the saloon felt like an eternity for the three of them, the air was growing thicker and thicker with every step until she gulped, and took a deep breath:

"This is us," Amanda said calmly when they reached the door. Her features seemed more relaxed now as if the walk had indeed helped the girl to successfully complete the titanic task of shushing her demons. Nathaniel entered his house without saying a single word, too ashamed by now to acknowledge the youngsters' determination. Amanda observed her father in silence as he clumsily went upstairs, then turned around to meet Erron's gaze – her fingers traveled the boy's swollen cheek, delicately tracing with her digits the bruised zone as if anticipating the damaged area that would soon be unmistakably visible. He shifted under her touch but not in pain – he wanted her whole palm to explore his face; the much needed and well-deserved appreciation was intoxicating for him.

"Thank you," the girl said with teared up eyes about to rain. That sad sight pained him deeply, as he understood her concern and her worry: not only was his father making unnecessary, gratuitous scenes – the man's erratic behavior was also evidently self-destructive, and she had already lost her mother; she couldn't afford to lose her father as well. Erron broke the awkward distance separating their bodies as he embraced her waist with his long and bony arms; then leaned in and placed his lips upon hers, breathing in her captivating essence for the first time. The kiss was brief but intensely real. Perhaps her flavor was more real than anything he had ever tasted.

As their lips parted tenderly, he began to notice the confusion in her eyes - her mouth, though, was grinning unceasingly at him: it was clear now that the girl wasn't expecting to be kissed yet not all things unexpected were bad, even in the Old West. Her smile made him smile, as he said good night and started the walk the path that would lead him back to his house. As he entered the now-empty saloon, he contemplated the scene with the eager eyes of an avant-garde lover: the chaotic image of a saloon nearly ruined was colliding surreally against the perfect moment he had just experienced. As he moved across the room, he found a lovely green hair ribbon resting carelessly on the floor –  _she must have lost it during the brawl_ , he concluded, as he kneeled down, took the souvenir and placed it in his pocket.

* * *

  **II – A Rusted, Medium-Sized Knife**

_March 24th, 1858_

* * *

"Just what in the world is taking him so long? He himself had said it,  _in and out_ :  _give the money, sign the contract - piece of cake_." Jessica asked Jo, with her eager eyes glued to the door. Everyone was there, waiting for good old Jacob to return; anxiety was taking its toll in the faces of those who belonged in the saloon's little, selected family. Erron was there as well, sitting behind the bar as usual. Jessica and his mother were both sitting on the edge of the stage; their careless legs were barely touching the ground as their feet hovered back and fro. The rest of the saloon girls was scattered in several groups around the tables; friendships and rivalries easily displayed to the trained eye.

Jacob finally entered the saloon after a while, carrying that precious piece of paper that was meant to change everybody's lives: Mr. Lind, the octogenarian saloon owner had decided it was time to sell the place and retire and so good old Jacob, fearing for the uncertain fate of his beloved ones, had made the ulterior sacrifice - giving up his life savings in order to buy the place. The triumphant march of the brand new bartender  _and_  owner of The Wise Bird Saloon was intoxicating; its grace was enveloping everyone. Jacob placed himself behind the bar, tousled Erron's hair frantically and said, in an invigorating tone:

"I know this is a special occasion; one that surely deserves to be celebrated. But we still have to work, we got bills to pay and now, my friends," he paused, as his solemn gaze reached for every face in the room, " _it's on us_. Everything that happens  _in_  this place, and everything that happens  _to_  this place, is on us. Hope you're all up to the task."

Everyone nodded in silent agreement, assimilating the true tenor behind Ol' Jake's words: they were indeed a family; they would have to work together now, jointly, to help the old man who had just saved their asses from bankruptcy. It was a two-way street, after all. The need was mutual, but it needed to be positively reciprocated.

"Don't forget that even though this place is ours now, everything will stay the same," Jacob concluded his eloquent speech. Yet the minute Erron nailed the "Under new management" sign to the porch pole,  _everything_  had already changed.

That night the music played louder than ever, the drinks seemed tastier, the dance almost perfectly synchronized to the sickening, rhythmic beat. The countless glasses, airborne, cheered for every toast that cruised from table to table throughout the night. The girls were busier than ever, entertaining several patrons at a time and introducing themselves to those wandering, curious eyes of brand new patrons who were visiting the place for the first time. The effervescence of the moment reached its peak when Josephine went on stage, looking more beautiful than ever in that crimson dress she would only wear on very few special occasions. She smiled at the excited crowd; the simplicity of her gesture alone was taking over the scene once again:

"I would like to borrow a moment of your time, I promise I won't be long," she began, with a tender grin. "Most of you don't know what's going on, but I bet you have surely realized by now that this is a special evening for us – let me tell you why. That man over there; the one you all know, our dear Jacob," she indicated as her eyes found the old man pouring drinks behind the bar. Jacob smiled tenderly in return; the delicacy of the gesture was softening a visage marked by wrinkles and creases, "well, he bought this place today. He has always been a special man for both my son and me, but today… he really saved us all." Jo explained as she raised her glass, her eyes still glued to the old man, "This one's for you, my dear friend."

The sweetness of his mother's undisclosed appreciation for Jake made Erron smile uncontrollably. There were moments, like that one, when that cold-hearted woman would make him remember why he loved her so much. The young boy raised a glass as well to join in the tumultuous toast that Jo was offering in Jacob's honor. Mr. Nathaniel Taggart was there, too, with his glass already in the air, cheering and celebrating Jacob just like everybody else. As soon as all glasses were emptied, the music resumed and Josephine started to sing. Erron was tapping his fingers on the bar, getting carried away by the infectious rhythm when a familiar hand surprised him, delicate and resolute at the same time, asking joyfully for a dance.

"You know I never was a dancer, Jess. Ever." The boy sentenced as his grin found its equal in Jessica's exultant smile.

"Oh, come on, just one dance," she begged, "don't be shy. I've seen you humming this tune before, it's your favorite one, I know," the eyes of the connoisseur were already towering over him.

The boy shook his head, unable to comply. He could do most things – but he could not dance.

He wasn't a dancer; the rhythmical aptitudes required for him to move his body accordingly to the sound of the beat had simply skipped him. He didn't have it in him, and so, he didn't like dancing: it was a torturous punishment for the boy.

Jessica cocked her head in disbelief, "Really? You won't dance with me? Your loss…" she said absentmindedly as she walked away slowly, her hips already moving to the infectious sounds created by Josephine and her band. The patrons came and went unceasingly and so, a collection of empty bottles began to pile up at the side of the bar. After a while, Erron decided to store them back in the larder and bring more unopened bottles to help Jacob throughout the busy night. He grabbed seven empty bottles of wine and made his way through the crowd, pushing some of the patrons slightly as he went but none of them seemed to care to say anything to the clumsy boy; they all were dancing and drinking to oblivion with the girls, their mischievous smiles were talking about all sorts of repressed cravings and desires.

Once he had made his way to the larder, Erron opened the old, battered wooden door with a little push of his shoulder; the bottles were clicking against each other as he tried his best to keep their fragile balance within his busy forearms.

"Let me help you with that, boy," Jessica said as she held the door open for him.

"Thank you, Jess," he said attentively.

The young boy stepped inside the larder then kneeled down and placed the empty bottles on the bottom shelve while Jessica stayed behind him, choosing new, unopened bottles from the ones displayed on the third and fourth shelves.

"Moonshine, maybe?" She asked, unsure about the drink.

"No, I don't think so. Tonight's a special night so… no Moonshine." The boy helped her – Jessica then reassumed the search for the perfect beverage as her fingertips began to tap on the Porto bottles reserved on the fifth shelve.

"So how are things between you and Amanda?" She asked with genuine curiosity as she abandoned the Porto where it was and moved closer to the boy, her left hand was already traveling up and down the length of his back. He turned around, as his amazed eyes started to show the first signs of that treasured lust between the two of them. Cause and effect; action and reaction – for them it was that simple.

"Things are fine," Erron answered simply as his lips rushed to meet Jessica's, his unstoppable tongue was clashing against hers. "I like it when you wear blue," he whispered through a deep breath, momentarily breaking the kiss only to make it stronger. The certainty and the urgency that only her body could provide was a feeling that he just couldn't outrun, ignore or deny: his desire was still strong, unaltered; even now that he had Amanda. His naughty, frantic hands found their way under the woman's skirt, making her tremble. Her skin was already reacting to his evolved touch. As Erron grabbed her by the waist and sat her down on the little wooden table placed by the only window in the small room, Jessica quickly unbuttoned the boy's trousers, his remarkable manhood was ready, she knew.

The experienced woman enveloped Erron's waist with her legs as her hands got busy removing frantically the capricious layers of her skirt that were trying to get in their way - the boy began to push and thrust then, the first drops of sweat were already forming in his temples, all that carnal tension between them was finally being released: there was no need to pretend anymore - she was there, within his reach once again and the feeling was more than simply overwhelming.

"Erron…" Jessica said suddenly, the usual elocution was never taken for granted by the busy boy – the sound of his own name propelled by her lips and ricocheting through the room was enough to make him even crazier.

"Erron…" She repeated as she tapped his shoulder with her fingertips but the boy didn't listen; he was finding his pleasure, dangerously headed beyond all warnings. Twice, she had said his name twice, the feeling was consuming, the need was uncontrollable.

"Erron…"

He should have listened.

"Erron," Jessica tried for the fourth time – her voice had changed, irrevocably, "Amanda's here."

The boy, petrified and already hearing his own heartbeat resounding insanely inside his dazed ears, lowered his head as horror began to consume him. Jessica sighed, embarrassed, as her hands pushed him away. After a brief moment filled with the utmost uncomfortable silence, Erron finally gathered all his strength and courage and turned around slowly, not caring in the slightest about his nakedness being shamelessly exposed, to find Amanda standing horrified by the door. Those eyes, cold and menacing, were killing him mercilessly.

"Amanda…" the troubled boy began, unsure of what to say next. He could have begged for forgiveness, he knew, but that consuming gaze of hers; those flickering devilish eyes would have never found the required grace to fully exonerate him. He took a step forward and covered his manhood with his trembling hands.

"Don't come any closer." Amanda sentenced, aggravated.

"But… 'Manda, you don't understand," the boy said as his clumsy fingers were desperately trying to hold on to his fallen pants.

"My father tried to warn me about you a thousand times but I chose not to listen," Amanda recalled, her sullen tone was now darker than before. Erron rushed his way towards her, his arms already reaching for the angry girl standing motionless in front of him – Amanda blinked, involuntarily, as she moved away – she kneeled down and took the medium-sized knife that was placed among the wheels of cheese and bread displayed in the second shelve. Erron took yet another step forward. His left hand, cruising mid-air, was trying to emulate that beloved bridge between them that he had demolished with his own irrepressible, sinful instincts.

"I said  _don't come any closer_ ," she threatened him coldly with the knife as she stood up again, stoically; the metallic tip was aimed ruthlessly in his direction. The lovely girl was no more, all that was left of her was her incredibly beautiful face but even so, her unparalleled beauty was not enough to mitigate the demon inside, corrupting her to her very core.

"This is not what it looks like, Amanda – I can explain," Jessica tried to intervene, sensing the danger.

"You don't get to have a say in this," Amanda retorted as her cold gaze found Jessica's, the knife was now shining cruelly in the older woman's direction. "How old is she anyway?" The angry girl asked Erron with such sadistic disdain and cruel repulsion that the sole interrogation was enough for the young boy to quiver under those distant big, blue eyes of hers.

"I asked how old is she, Erron," Amanda repeated as her venomous sight continued deconstructing the half-naked woman still sitting on the table.

"Twenty-eight," Jessica replied as she lowered her head.

"Then you're a child molester," Amanda sentenced coldly; revulsion and repugnance were taking over her already altered face. "And you…" she said as she went back to Erron, "I cannot even begin," the girl tried her best to tame the storm gathering inside but it was useless: she broke down and cried, choking her unspoken words with an anguish that ran so deep she couldn't control it. As she braced herself she finally dropped the knife, helplessly surrendering to that sadness engulfing her – then she covered her face with her hands and ran off, leaving the tormented lovers alone. Both Jessica and Erron sighed in unison, confused and disrupted, as an unbearably uncomfortable silence enveloped them. The small larder had never seemed so big.

They dressed up in silence and left the larder after a while, parting ways almost immediately: Jessica went upstairs and the boy made his way back to the bar.

"Well, that's not the face I was expecting," Jacob confessed after seeing Erron's laconic expression.

"Tell me what happened. What was she doing in the larder?" The boy interrogated the old man as he sat on a stool.

"She came looking for her father, I couldn't help myself and I told her the big news, she seemed happy." Jacob narrated as the boy lit up a cigar. "I assured her that Nathaniel was fine, and he  _was_ fine, for once in his life he was actually behaving. So she asked about you - she was looking for you; I assumed you'd be in the larder rearranging the bottles. Now what happened back there, boy? Did you fight?"

_Did you fight?_

_If only._

There was nothing to be said; nothing to be explained. The boy was trapped inside his own web of lies and intrigues.

"Did you two fight?" Jacob insisted.

Erron didn't answer. The guilt and the shame he was feeling were too much of a burden for the kid to face such a righteous man as Jacob. Besides, no one knew about the forbidden love affair between him and Jessica. Opening up his mouth had the potential to turn an already ruined night into an endless nightmare.

He sat in silence, pensive, as the dull grey smoke clouded his saddened façade. Across the crowded room, Nathaniel Taggart's menacing eyes were scorching the boy's already damaged self-esteem like an indomitable fire that could not be contained. It was clear that the old man could sense that something was wrong.

Erron exhaled, as good old Jacob finally left him alone, understanding that the boy was not looking for a conversation. However, the much-needed solitude the bartender had provided him with was not enough to quiet the voices gathering inside his head.

* * *

  **III – A Derringer Pistol**

_April 28th, 1858_

* * *

_Humid subtropical my ass_ , Erron thought as he sat down on the front porch. Jessica followed him, sitting down on the little wooden stairs a couple of steps behind the boy. Erron searched his pockets for a pack of smokes but gave up within seconds, helplessly:

"I'm out," he declared as his eyes looked up to the skies above: not a single cloud was there to ruin the most perfect blue displayed all above Arroya. The cold wind enveloping them was tempting enough for the former saloon girl and the rascal to consider, no matter how briefly, the inviting chance of entering the saloon.

They exchanged tired glances and nodded quietly with unspoken concomitance:  _no way_.

Yet he wanted a cigarette; hell – he certainly deserved one.

And so did Jessica.

"Let me see if Jacob has some cigars hidden by the bar," the woman said as she disappeared behind the door hoping for her memory to be right: she was well-aware of Ol' Jake's tricks and habits – and hiding places for his most protected earthly treasures: booze and cigars. She would laugh, every now and then, watching the old man's distrusting attitude towards those who dared ask for one of his cigars: they all lived in a saloon, for god's sake, the situation was ridiculous. In a matter of mere seconds, Jessica was outside again; she had been fast enough not to be seen. She outstretched her arm as she offered the little red box to the young man still sitting on the porch. Erron took a cigar and lit it quickly; his hands were acting like protective houses for the flame to endure the merciless chill endangering its incipient warmth. He blew out an uneven puff of smoke that soon got lost in the wind – only the smell persisted, as it got mixed with Jessica's tobacco, intoxicating and much needed.

_Is that…?_

The woman eyed the boy but she said nothing. She chose not to startle him, unsure about that figure she had seen walking towards them. She was so tired she couldn't tell if that body was real or if it was just another mirage playing tricks on her in that godforsaken desert. Only when she recognized the young lady heading towards the saloon she asked:

"Do you want me to go?"

Quickly getting the message, Erron's eyes tried to focus on that unclear female figure that was walking towards them. As the shape got closer, the feeling began to shake him from within.

Amanda.

He looked over his shoulder and shook his head, instantly rejecting Jessica's offer. No matter how angry the girl could be, Jessica was his friend – she was more than that: she was family, and now he needed her by his side.

Amanda's short, tight steps were revealing such an acute fury the girl could simply not contain nor dominate no matter how hard she tried. Erron let out a tired sigh as he got ready for yet another confrontation: more than a month had passed and he had tried to get her back – God, he had tried - but now he was exhausted, he neither had the time nor the energy to deal with a jealous daddy's girl.

"Thanks, but no thanks," Amanda spat coldly the minute she saw Erron. She stood right in front of him, her infuriated shadow was towering over the seemingly careless boy, then she handed him a brown package – the indifferent young man inspected it carefully with narrowed eyes and then raised his eyebrows in mild surprise.

"What is this?" He demanded to know, as he returned the package to the still angered girl.

"It's a dress, you moron - and a very expensive one. I thought it was from you," she explained, mad and confused. "I thought of it as a peace offering, you know? Since it's my fifteenth birthday."

_Right._

_Her birthday._

He had been so busy lately with his mother's delicate health that he hadn't even had the chance or the spirit to celebrate his own birthday, only two days earlier than hers. He shook his head once again, as Jessica shrugged in her place, equally confused.

"I'm gonna change, I don't want to ruin my church clothes," Jessica said, throwing away her cigar absentmindedly. The truth was that she was eager to leave; the situation was far too uncomfortable for her to swim peacefully through it. Amanda's restless waves of anger and disapproval were clashing violently against Erron's silent tide. The woman stood up and went inside the saloon, leaving the youngsters alone for the first time ever since the larder incident. That unexpected intimacy felt foreign for the still puzzled yet indifferent Erron; he had never been alone during his countless attempts to get her back – he had had Jacob, he had had the girls and even his own mother during those futile nights behind the bar. Amanda would come over, he would say "I'm sorry", she would reject him, and the boy would reassume his chores, pretending to be fine. The first week had been torturous, the second one had been rather discouraging; the third week had felt alien; as if he was constantly reliving a sickening déjà vu – but the fourth week, the last one, had been a known charade for nearly everyone – they all would just follow the flow, and anticipate the repeated outcome automatically, already detached from all actual hope.

"You look like shit," Amanda began as soon as they were alone. The line of his jaw was rigid with tension yet it looked almost as if the boy was about to touch the edges of oblivion with his empty, blackened eyes.

"And here I thought I was wearing my finest clothes," he retorted sarcastically as his expression hardened. "I was up all night; my mother is not feeling alright again. Jessica and I went to church this morning, I'm not a great believer myself but she is – we attended mass, just came back." The boy explained, serious.

"You brought a hooker to church?" Amanda asked, her disgust was vivid.

"She's not a hooker," Erron stated coldly, "and  _she_  brought  _me_." He got up slowly, resting the weight of his tired bones against the nearest porch post. He could not believe his ears: he had told her that his mother was not feeling alright again yet the only thing she had heard; the only thing that had  _successfully_  caught that damn girl's attention, the only thing that had been _powerful_  enough to reach her selective ears and cause a reaction inside her brain was that he and Jessica had attended mass together.

"I don't need you to tell me what she is; I know exactly what she is," Amanda retorted bitterly. Her words weren't the ones that could easily be found in a moral sermon like the one they had just heard in church yet they were vindictive enough to make him see that the image she had witnessed in the larder was still fresh, hauntingly fresh inside her mind.

He moved closer, the shadows on his face were secluding that tenderness that had once defined him.

"I assume you still think she's a child molester," Erron said as he crossed his arms over his chest.

She nodded in silence. Twenty-eight against fourteen wasn't right. No matter if the younger party had given their consent – it was wrong.

"You know what?" Erron asked as his fiery temper started to get the best of him, blinding him, making it impossible for him to acknowledge the decisive opportunity Amanda had given him with her unexpected visit. "I'm too wasted to deal with your shit right now. So why don't you just run back home, and tell your daddy that the woman he wants to  _drill_  is not gonna sing tonight? Maybe she won't be singing tomorrow, either. And the day after tomorrow. Perhaps she won't be singing in a month, or it could be for a whole year. Maybe she won't sing again, ever, who knows?" He was the one towering over her now as his stoic index finger tapped the girl disdainfully in the middle of her chest. "Go home and tell your father that he should have fucked her while he still had the chance."

Her teared up eyes deconstructed him for a moment, trying to understand why she had suddenly become the sole container of all his repressed anguish. She didn't get it – he had done everything in his power to get closer to her then he had slept with another woman – and, apparently, in some corner of his twisted reasoning, she wasn't entitled to her opinion. He had cheated on her and she wasn't allowed to be furious about it. Of course, it pained her to hear about Jo's deteriorating health yet it wasn't enough to pretend they were okay –  _their_  problems and  _Jo's_  problems were completely different things.

He had tried to get her back and now that she was finally ready to see him again as her beloved boy he was willing to throw it all away. And for what? For Jessica? Was he choosing Jessica over her? Why? So he could just run to the arms of his absurdly older lover? Was he so desperate, so blinded, so stupidly needy?

Her father had warned her on countless occasions.

And she should have listened.

She slapped him hard in the face as the first unleashed tears started to stream down her visage. Then she turned around, cursing him and herself, and went back home.

Nights without Josephine were heartbreakingly different.

Such incomplete evenings would always paint a completely different picture for each and every one of the troubled souls and the indifferent spirits hovering all around the quieted saloon.

The singer's painful absence, intrinsically and immensely mystified in a darkened agora of uncertainty and sadness, would provide a completely different panorama for all the members of The Wise Bird family. The lacking mysticism that only Josephine could easily imprint on everyone with her sole presence, while gone, would bury every soul into a dark, deep well of contorted faces and a cheap sense of profane mundanity weighting heavily on their shoulders. Not only did that incomparable woman know how to deliver an excellent performance: she was something more than just an entertainer. Josephine's effortless yet thorough ways were an echo whispering honeyed words in their worn out ears; the superiority of the artist and the intimacy created by that miraculous craft of hers were like the white dove that crowns the perfect magic trick.

But without her, everything was different.

A sepia-colored aura would envelop the place and all of its circumstantial or permanent residents.  _Lackluster_ , Jessica had once said about those defying nights, defining their gloomy nature with the wisdom of an expert.

And she was right. She was painfully right.

Madeline was not the same thing; Amanda had pointed it out herself before: they all wanted the cute one,  _not the fat one that only sings when no-one's around to listen_. Poor old Madeline would always try her best to give a good, rather decent performance but the shoes she was meant to fill were just way too big for the forty-one years old, mother of four, chubby Arkansawyer. The woman would try to do everything in her power to mitigate Jo's absence, her efforts would be palpable – yet it seemed they all had been doomed beforehand, like a never-ending curse working its black magic on the struggling replacement.

Erron looked around to find a silent saloon, seemingly lifeless, almost at the very verge of giving up.

In the end, it was  _yet another night_  without Josephine's melodic pleasantries for everyone, but not for him. Each one of those obscure nights was like a dagger damaging his already wounded, fragile states. The son sighed, as the headache and the tiredness of his stressed muscles began to grasp their advantage, taking over his weary body.

Jessica made her way behind the bar and exhibited the impeccable silver tray she was carrying to both Jacob and Erron. Water, soup, bread, and butter: everything was untouched. Loss of appetite was one more symptom to add to the extensive list of signs that, in time, would paint the picture more clearly for them. Yet right now, her uncertain health was like a restless tidal wave; sometimes it would be calmed and easy but some other times it would be furious, subjugating the woman's body to the confines of her bed. Fatigue and the yellowing of the singer's skin were also there, for her loved ones to speculate freely about the causes of such cruel disease.

Amanda's strange apparition brought him back to reality or, at least, it brought him back to a  _different_  reality. The girl was wearing a big, blue scarf that covered most of her face and neck. Erron found that suspicious and so the boy walked up to her; his racing mind was already plotting the undeniable story behind her sudden purism: her eyes were telling him that her attitude had nothing to do with the disapproval she had expressed about his rendezvous with Jessica; she was not protesting, she wasn't trying to catch his attention. It was her birthday after all, so shouldn't she be celebrating? Her dull expression, far from being festive, was a silent cry for help.

It was true that they weren't in the best of terms - but that didn't mean he didn't care for that girl: he  _cared_ , deeply.

"What happened?" He asked, trying to conceal his genuine worry with disinterested indifference.

The girl shook her head; her foolish pride was the only thing preventing the words from leaving her mouth.

She wasn't going to let him in so easily, after all.

"I'm looking for my father," she began – her soft voice was chocked, it was pointless to hide all that repressed anguish behind the scarf. "It's time to go home."

Erron narrowed his eyes; he neither had the time nor the patience to pretend he was willing to let it go: he sensed something was wrong. He outstretched his left arm and removed the scarf that was covering her face: five fingers were marked on her right cheek – the reddened punishment had branded her, exhibiting signs of non-existent guilt for everyone to judge her.

Choleric, and driven by the devil, the boy made his way to Nathaniel's table and signaled the saloon girls to leave. They rolled their eyes, already anticipating the brawl that was about to start. Erron eyed the girls with disapproving disdain but they didn't understand, he knew. They had no clue about the true nature of the events about to happen and their poor judgment would never suffice.

"What happened?" The boy demanded. "Why did you slap her?"

Nathaniel sighed, feeling insulted and exasperated, and visibly shaken by the little rascal's impertinence, then said: "She told me she came here to talk some sense into you; she wanted to believe the dress was from you." he began; his challenging eyes were piercing the young boy staring judgmentally at him. "I warned her about you many times. I told her not to come; I don't want her anywhere near you, you scumbag, I know your kind… But she disobeyed, yet again. I told her a good-for-nothing like you could have never afforded such fine couture. But as usual, she didn't listen. Long story short, she came back home crying her eyes out because of you, _again_ , and I simply said,  _I told you so._ " The mockery of his tone was enough to make the boy insane. It was true that he had never had his own father around to raise him and teach him how to treat a woman right – yet old Jacob with his delicate, sensible manners had been the greatest mentor he could have asked for. Nathaniel didn't have the right; he couldn't control Amanda like that – she was his daughter, that much was true, yet she wasn't his property.

"So you slapped her in the face?" Erron frowned, disapprovingly. His eyes were already showing all the violence that the boy had been bottling up.

"She's my daughter. She disobeyed." Nathaniel retorted simply, looking like an emotionless Viking, trying to justify his abusive behavior in the simplest of ways. "Mind your own business, kid," he tried to dismiss the boy with disdainful superiority.

Nathaniel Taggart's archaic notions of patriarchy, intricately combined with a perverse fondness for impunity given his social status, were surprisingly indulging for the heated boy.

As ire found its way inside of him, alongside the intoxicating need for extricating all possible apprehension regarding that man and all of his unjustifiable manners, the boy eventually realized that the unfair father had unexpectedly provided him with a proper way to vent off steam: not only he would avenge Amanda's wounded pride; he would also use that man as his personal catalyst. The impending ghost of his mother's decease would also be there, coexisting with the abusing father. The abusing father and his own abandoner father would then melt into a metaphor of solitude and incompletion. The way that cocky man used to talk to his mother, disrespectfully surpassing every barrier of acceptable social traditions and conventions would also be added to the mix of reasons why that man was going to be on the receiving end of all his suppressed anger. Last but not least, the boy's own stupidity would be present as well, that month he had spent away from Amanda because of his own impossibility to say no to Jessica would be the corollary for such deep-rooted emotions, now about to explode like a supernova.

Without saying a single word, a fifteen-year-old Black went upstairs, to the room he used to share with his mother. The woman was asleep just as he had expected so she didn't notice him there, rummaging through her belongings. He searched through her clothes for that little black box he knew Jo had concealed in the bottom of her wardrobe  _just in case_ : he opened the box and took her derringer pistol, then he made his way back to the saloon – he had made up his mind; he knew what should be done.

Erron took a deep breath and stood in front of a rather jovial Mr. Taggart:

"Outside," the boy challenged Amanda's father in a very simple way yet it was effective enough for the man to notice that the kid wasn't bluffing. Nathaniel placed his own revolver on the table then, and shook his head sarcastically:

"Come on, boy. Just give me a break," Nathaniel's eyes traveled from his weapon to the boy standing stoically in front of his table, "don't be stupid, kid. My bullet would not only kill you; it will also blow my chances with your mother. I may be a drunken asshole, but I know my limits," the old man paused, as he raised an eyebrow: "Do you know yours?"

Like a furious bull seeing red being mockingly waved in front of him, Erron charged against Amanda's cynical father – the table and the chairs surrounding the man were the sparkling signals that everyone had been waiting for to start yet another bar brawl. Now that the guns were out of reach, he would fight that man to submission; he would subjugate his very essence with his bare hands. Nathaniel fell down to the ground and the avid boy kneeled down on his chest: he punched him in the face several times, not even the sight of blood was enough to make him stop; not now that his fists were finally releasing the tension that had been wearing him out.

Courageously making her way through flying chairs and airborne legs and fists, a frightened yet brave Amanda kicked the fallen guns out of their reach and grabbed Erron by the hand – nobody really liked Nathaniel, she knew, so the girl was positive her old man was about to find a new rival to continue the fight in no time. The auburn-haired girl walked Erron outside and closed the door behind them. She broke down and cried again but this time, instead of acting cold and indifferent, the battered boy embraced her tightly, understanding that he was not the only one in need of an emotional release.

That was the moment he knew, the moment he was certain: that gracious yet fragile body of hers belonged there, in his arms.

He moved closer, as he ran his fingers through her messy hair. Cheek by cheek as they were, his lips found hers again; the much-needed baptism of her kiss was the healing potion he had been searching for so long. The girl grinned shyly as their lips parted: the embrace had been so tight she hadn't noticed his lips were on hers at first. Now that didn't matter: while devouring each other there was no need to worry about anything – her tormenting father was no more than a broken ghost that could not reach her now.

Not if  _he_  was around.

She broke the kiss again and stared deeply into those coffee-colored eyes that were fighting their usual coldness with an untamable fire: she cupped his face with her hands and whispered:

"You and Jessica – that's over."

The boy smiled, his simple gesture was finally admitting that there was no true need for him to hold on to another body now. He had her, he would wait for her.

As his lips met hers again, the yelling and the sounds of bottles breaking inside the saloon were music to their sweetened ears. The shadows dancing chaotically in the windows, clearly visible from where they were standing, were projecting quite the picturesque scene for the never-ending bar brawl that was still very much alive inside The Wise Bird. The sound of the girls' high heeled boots running madly, impacting against the wooden floor was intoxicating. Madelaine's useless attempts were just another missing note in the glorious scale composed of violence and alcohol. Did they even know what they were fighting about anymore? Did they even have a reason? The kids didn't mind.

It was true that Erron himself had been the one spark causing the fire, but now their reality was a very different one and all that yelling, all the cursing and screaming they were hearing seemed joyfully alien to them.

Behind that door the whole world could have caved in, they both knew.

The walls could have crumbled; the floor could have cracked open, unleashing the lava and the brimstone that follows after the inevitable hellfire's havoc.

None of those terrifying outcomes mattered anymore.

* * *

  **IV – A Brown Box of Cartridges, Half-Empty**

_December 23rd, 1858_

* * *

Debts were piling up, irremediably. No matter how good or noble their intentions were, they all knew they wouldn't be able to pay all those bills in time - the creditors needed money,  _real_  money, they wouldn't settle for just a bunch of good intentions and promises filled with hopes of a better, more stable and inspirational future.

So good old Jacob had gathered all the saloon workers and employees for a meeting; his most intimate constellation of people would have to work together now to plan a future strategy that would, hopefully, buy them some time before the collectors would come knocking. They had a low budget to take care of and with that in mind; they had decided to take on some auxiliary steps in order to maintain a better balance between the poor incomes and the exaggerated outcomes. One of the first things they had all agreed upon was to start producing their own bread instead of purchasing it from a third party. Starting effectively on January 2nd, the saloon would have its own bakery - that's why the fifteen-year-old future mercenary was in the larder that evening: he was in charge of the inventory.

"Jake, please - no more flour!" He stuck his head out of the larder's door and yelled with the bitten pencil trapped against his teeth.

"You can never have enough flour if you're going to bake your own bread," Amanda remarked cleverly as she kneeled down to rearrange the dozens of sacks that were still unopened.

"Sixty-two unopened sacks of flour seems like a lot to me," the boy said with self-indulgence, shrugging innocently. "Perhaps these sacks will do for now, as a head start." Erron went on as he kneeled down as well, his hands busy with packages and bottles. "Jake will know better, I guess… 'manda, pass me the Porto bottles, the dark ones on the table." He asked absentmindedly, completely absorbed in the task that Ol' Jacob had trusted him with. Finally, he was being given some responsibility other than pour an obscene amount of glasses only to be asked to try his best and persuade those drunken patrons to head back home only minutes later.

The girl took a step forward and froze. Her feet, paralyzed, were pinned down to the ground: not only she was visiting the larder for the first time since the infamous Jessica incident - she had found them having sex on that very same table she was supposed to be approaching by now. The image was painfully vivid. The woman was still there, passionately expressing her pleasure right before her eyes. She could still picture her half-naked body succumbing to the ecstasy that Erron was offering, his undivided attention had crowned that body and the specter of their physical unity still persisted before Amanda's reminiscing eyes, lingering, hovering before her like a recurrent nightmare that would not leave her be.

 _Damn it_ , Erron thought as he realized her struggling mind had effectively retreated her into the remote depths of that dark corner again: she was no good at hiding that awkwardness; that beautiful face of hers was so hurtfully expressive that the slightest change in the atmosphere would be enough to make all her colors shine through. The variations for each emotion would be reflected in her features; it seemed as if she was unable to feel simple things. He had considered that notion a long time ago: hers were intricate patterns of feelings; the matrix of her emotions had thousands of layers and he had yet to see the majority of them.

Nine months had passed since she had caught them in that godforsaken larder yet the memory clearly remained untouched in the scenario of her mind. He had noticed the way Amanda's facial features would harden every time Jessica was around. The sting persisted, it clearly bothered her. A simple tap on the shoulder, a minuscule smile would be enough for her eyes to darken; her jawline would become an immobile, rigid horizon for her troubled face. He had tried to explain to her that Jessica was a friend; even more than that –  _she was family_. His words would only start the fire again, but could he really blame her for stating out the obvious?

" _That's just sick,"_  she would retort every time; the image of lovers and relatives all mixed up and blended into the same act was nauseating for the girl and deep down, he knew she was right.

The turning point when perversion played its card was a mystery for the puzzled boy still searching for a satisfactory answer. How come that woman had traveled the distance from being  _aunt Jessy_  to his forbidden lover?

It was more than just macabre; way more than simply sinister.

It was unacceptably Dantesque.

Trying to swim in their muddy waters by just recurring to the simplicity of the most obvious shelter was fruitless: yes, he was a kid; and he was eager to explore his sexuality. But  _she_ … it was wrong, even an inexperienced, silly twelve-year-old could have sensed that.

Maybe the reason was even simpler. Maybe Jo had a point for punishing his soul with such miserable bitterness. Maybe he was, indeed,  _nothing more than_   _his father's son_.

The flesh of his flesh.

The sin of his sins.

"I need a moment," Amanda let out softly as she left the larder. She glued her back to the wall and took a deep breath. Erron followed her immediately, unsure of what to say but acknowledging her turmoil as his own for the first time since the incident. He hadn't allowed himself the time to think about the events of that tragic night yet it was easy to perceive the transgression, the unforgivable violation of the one thing that should have remained untouched:  _family_.

He knew Jessica wasn't a real relative yet the shame of the almost incestuous pairing was still there, floating around some distant corner of his mind. Perhaps he  _was_  his father's son, after all. The flesh of his flesh, the sin of his sins.

He put his arms around his love and there they stayed for a moment, deeply engulfed in silence. Only the squealing of footsteps coming from the old wooden ladder startled them, as they both stretched their necks to see who was there: Nathaniel Taggart and Josephine, hand in hand like enamored teenagers, were heading upstairs. They were giggling; the sound of his mother's quiet and condescending laughter was a bomb exploding inside his soured ears. Amanda tried to hold on to him but the fuse had already been ignited: now he was on fire and the larder was the involuntary victim he had chosen to unleash his uncontainable fury.

He kicked the door and punched the walls and the shelves. The bottles breaking in unison in response to his outburst were mimicking the sounds of a maddened, out of tune xylophone. The tiny pieces of colored glass were everywhere – some of them had even reached him, successfully cutting his forearms and hands: those would be the first cuts to be displayed on his skin, and they were yet to be accompanied by a gruesome variety of lacerations that would ultimately become his personal journal, opened and exhibited for anyone to read. The landmarks of his own life, imitating the milestones at the side of the road, would then cover his arms and the rest of his skin: each scar would have a story to tell, each one of their narrations would speak of a path filled with pain and sorrow.

Amanda stayed outside, frightened but stoic, trying to get the jammed door to open. Erron placed his hands on the upper shelve and finally bent over, the muscles of his back were aching after the unexpected release of adrenaline. Outside, the quivering sound of Amanda's voice was far from soothing: it was a fatuous flame consuming him; she was a victim as well as he was, that vicious man had accomplished that one thing they had thought he could never achieve: to sleep with Josephine.

The man was way out of line again but that wasn't the only thing that was bothering the young future mercenary.

" _In all honesty… he wants to sleep with the singer; not the fat one that only sings when no-one's around to listen - the cute one."_

The memory of their first encounter was branded inside of him. Such treasured moments were now seen through a different optic, the painful meaning behind Amanda's seemingly naïve assumptions was finally solidifying into a palpable actuality.

" _Anyway, my mother doesn't do that,"_  the boy had said, innocently, as he finally let go of Amanda's hands. He wasn't a stranger to his mother's reputation back then nor was it the first time someone was suggesting that Jo could do so much more than just perform in front of an audience yet the boy still had refused to believe in those rumors.

Not anymore.

" _Do what?"_  Amanda had asked back then as if already anticipating the obvious answer.

" _Sleep with men."_  Erron had clarified.

" _And how do you think you were conceived?"_  The girl had enquired smartly, opening the door to a horrifying story he would never tell her. His precarious sense of pride wouldn't allow him, and his mother's reputation was at stake.

" _She slept with one man,"_  the boy had then retorted, resolute. Even though his precarious manhood had already been summoned by Jessica's tantalizing methods; the young Texan boy was still a defenseless pawn to his own innocence when it came to his mother.

Not anymore.

" _One man."_  Amanda had pointed out the obvious.  _"And just once."_  Seeing things in retrospective, it seemed as if she had known something he had not.

" _You're funny."_ She had laughed.

Not anymore.

He cursed through clenched teeth as he recalled his own words back then, the day he met Amanda: the truth was now obviously painful. Not only he  _was_  the son of his father, flesh of his flesh and sin of his sins.

He  _was_  the son of a bitch.

He was the unwanted offspring of a whore and a coffee-eyed devil. No wonder he had such darkness dwelling deep inside of him, he concluded bitterly.

His darkened eyes found Jacob's box of cartridges resting carelessly among the untouched wheels of cheese: it was more than a simple idea; it was the evolved version of that original idea that had set on his mind the night he found Nathaniel's fingers cruelly marked on Amanda's cheek – now it was an imperative, urgent need.

He hesitated for a moment as his fingers played with the cartridges – he had had his fair share of training under old Jacob's supervision, he knew how to use a gun – he had murdered countless bottles and cans, he knew - but that was different. Aiming for an actual living target; ending someone, taking a life – there was no true training for that.

And there would be no turning back.

Once the trigger had been pulled, once the life had been taken away from its rightful owner his own life, as he had known it, was also going to be over.

It was true that it wasn't the first time that such an obscure consideration was tempting enough for the restless boy to envision himself pulling the trigger on Nathaniel Taggart: god, he had had enough of him; he knew the man had it coming. But that bastard was also Amanda's father, and the look on her face would bury him in a deadly grave far worse than the one he was procuring for her father.

That look, he knew, would have the potential to shatter him into a million pieces. The painful regret inside her eyes would be worse than prison.

And there would be no turning back for that either.

With one last push from her shoulder, the girl finally opened the damaged door – her arms flew to find him, enveloping him in a tight embrace. He caressed her hands as the girl whispered comforting words in his ear. He couldn't do it: that girl inside his arms was the reason why. He shifted slightly to face her; the love in her look was real – he couldn't lose her again because of his untamed ways, no,  _not again_ ; he would have to learn to be patient. He grinned tenderly as the girl broke the embrace and tugged her hair behind her reddened ears.

Erron turned around once more, he was facing the shelve again now as his fingers tapped on every wheel of cheese displayed before his eyes.

"You know, sixty-two unopened sacks of flour seems like a lot to me too," Amanda began, trying to change the subject, "maybe you should tell Jacob that he doesn't need to buy any more flour, at least, for now."

Erron nodded in silence, as his troubled ears began to hear the first moans of pleasure coming from his mother's bedchamber. He closed his eyes and exhaled, his curled up fists were resting on the battered shelve in front of him.

He took two wheels of cheese and some butter – then his fingers stopped mid-air as if considering the obvious. The maddened boy looked over his shoulder: Amanda was busy rearranging the Porto bottles placed on  _that_ table. He grabbed the brown box of cartridges and concealed it between the cheeses: the temptation embodied by the ammunition was too strong for his angered senses yet he knew he couldn't do it. That girl, bravely facing her own demons now in the simple task of rearranging the Porto bottles was the living proof of that. She had overcome her own ghosts. Now it was high time he learned how to overcome his.

Perhaps he was indeed the cursed offspring of a whore and a devil. But he was the one in charge of his own emotions and decisions.

"I'll be right back," he said, as he exited the larder.

* * *

  **V – A Butterfield Revolver**

_February 25th, 1859_

* * *

He was a child of violence; their echoed voices would haunt him during the nights. The certainty of their dull accusation would persist beyond his nightmares; his own origins had been stained with the despicable ink of subjugation. His body would turn and toss in bed every night, as he would crave that easier beginning that seemed elusive and distant – the dirty white curtains would dance around the window as his coffee-colored eyes would watch their blissful pace: no matter how torturing his nights were, the old attic had become his private sanctuary now.

"We cannot share a room anymore, you are fifteen now – it's just not alright for us to have our beds separated by only a few inches," Jo had stated several months ago, "it's time you moved your stuff to the old attic."

The saloon's attic was the place he had feared the most during his childhood. The eerie atmosphere and the constant sense of abandonment seemed torturous and menacing for the kid to say the least. Yet now, seen through the eyes of a grown-up boy, the place didn't look so bad, actually. It was as cold as the wild tundra during the winter and hotter than the sun itself during the summertime but, at least, it provided him with some well-deserved, much-needed privacy.

That afternoon, as he turned and tossed in bed as usual while longing for some slumber after a busy night behind the bar, the kid sensed that something was wrong downstairs – the voices and sounds coming from the saloon were different; some of those sounds he had never heard before. He got up slowly and went downstairs; his bare feet were trying to be as stealthy as possible. The young Erron Black glued his back to the wall and watched the scene in silence: his worst fears had been confirmed. The impatient creditors had indeed sent their bloodhounds dogs to collect their precious money. It  _was_  time to pay; only the little money they had to offer wasn't good enough.

The boy narrowed his eyes as an attempt to focus his tired sight and there he found them; those familiar faces were now the image of fear itself: Jacob, Josephine, and Jessica were sitting down behind the bar; their trembling hands were desperately trying to calm down the ruthless weapons threatening to end their lives.

The boy cursed under his breath – he hadn't expected those bastards to be so rude to his loved ones. His gaze darkened, as the beast inside of him started to show.

He was a child of rape; he was the son of abuse itself.

A demon with dark eyes like coffee had raped  _her_.

She was only thirteen.

 _Raped, you said? You must have done something to get yourself raped. -_ That's what her parents had told her.

_The headache._

_The struggle._

_The shame._

She couldn't take it anymore; her own parents were judging her mercilessly. She was the silent victim yet no-one seemed to notice her turmoil - so she packed her bags and left her house. She never looked back. She never returned.

Around the same time, Jessica had run away from her house as well. Both girls met on the road: their unfortunate beginnings were now deeply rooted by their instant friendship and mutual trust. They had entered the saloon looking for a job but they ended up with so much more than that: they had found a nurturing family willing to take care of them.

Good Ol' Jacob and his wife took the girls in, Jo and Jess were barely fourteen years old back then.

The then-bartender and his wife Agnes had already lost a daughter a few years prior to the girls' unexpected arrival; those lovely runaways, showing up out of the blue in such a miraculous way were meant to fill the void in their hearts and that was exactly what they did: they filled the hollowed emptiness that was consuming both the bartender and his wife and the feeling was reciprocated by the improvised, renewed parents.

Josephine was with child – the outcome of all that violence would not leave her alone; there will be, always and constant, an unwanted child to remind her of the hell she had been forced to visit. She considered the tempting chance of interrupting the undesired pregnancy but she wasn't brave enough. The sudden thought had invaded her many times during those nine months of carrying the offspring of that demon – yet she never had the courage to actually do something about it.

So she ended up giving birth to that unwanted coffee-eyed boy on April 26th, 1843. Those eyes were still chasing after her – they would haunt her, they would be the torturers in the night, haunting the woman during her darkest nightmares.

Eight years after taking them in Agnes passed; the mother and the daughter had been finally reunited.

Jacob had raised them as sisters. They  _felt_  like sisters.

For a brief period of his childhood, the boy had even called her  _aunt Jessy_.

But things had progressed differently for those girls. Josephine was the brains, Jessica was the muscle – they all knew that.

Jacob, seeing Josephine's talent, encouraged her to sing. The old man had inadvertently provided the girl with the chance she had been looking for to finally detach herself from mankind: Jo sheltered herself in her craft; she was finally secluded under a thick halo of mysteriousness - the distance of the artist.

Things had progressed quite differently for Jessica.

Being a saloon girl had granted her many interesting acquaintances - one of them later turned out to be her husband. Mr. Adrian Blanxart, a Spaniard notary from Virginia City had visited the saloon one night; the man was longing to have a drink or two before going back home but he never left. He couldn't leave. Jessica had offered him a weekend to remember but to simply remember it was not an option for the infatuated man. So he married her. He accepted her for who she really was.  _Lord, I know you're no librarian_  – the man had stated on several occasions.

Yet he wanted exclusivity.

He had said many times that he wanted her to quit her job as a saloon girl but she couldn't just abandon her family. So she stayed. She worked fewer hours so she could have her fair share of quality time at home with her husband. Even old Jacob had helped her: that treasured silhouette of hers wasn't in the crossfire anymore; she had been promoted - Jessica was now in charge of all the saloon girls.

Now both of them were the brains. It was time for the fresher meat to become the muscle.

Jacob bought the saloon eventually. Erron's symbolic, fictitious grandfather had been the one by the boy's side all along. That loving man had taught him how to read, write, swim, ride a horse, and fire a weapon – he had even taught him about the theory of sex - Jessica herself had shown him the more practical side of it.

Life was finally turning around for all of them – all but Josephine.

Jessica had become an educated lady with friends in high places but Jo never had such luck. She secluded herself in the confines of her own solitude and the boy hated her for that, her ambivalent, ambidextrous affection always seemed ready to harm him –  _guess being raped at age thirteen changes your perception of love_ , Jessica had said time and again, trying to justify Josephine's erratic behavior.

But the bond between the mother and the unwanted son was one of a weird nature.

She was a very talented lady, and her son loved her for that – the nurturing feelings in his mother's eyes so full of love while staring at him from the stage were still one of his most treasured memories. But she was also an alcoholic and her son hated her for that. Whatever fate was waiting for that woman, she had brought it upon herself, the boy had sadly concluded many times.

Theirs was a tragic bond: without a father, he had been abandoned by his mother  _and not_  – she never truly behaved like a mother; she despised that child yet a part of her loved him at the same time.

But now all those familiar faces were in danger.

Their stories, forever entangled with his own incipient story, weighted heavily on his young shoulders. He had been raised among garter straps and high heels; the saloon life was the only life he had known up until that moment - he knew their faces like the back of his hand; each change on those visages had a different meaning: danger, disapproval, exhaustion, sadness, happiness, thrill…

_Danger._

Now it was  _danger_.

Erron took a deep breath, already acknowledging what he was about to do.

He went inside Jacob's bedchamber and grabbed the man's old Butterfield revolver. The gun was loaded – now he needed a good strategy. He went back to the attic and got dressed, concealing the weapon under the black poncho that was now warming up his shoulders and torso. Then went downstairs, kneeled down and slowly made his way to the saloon crouching among tables and chairs – he moved carefully until he found himself behind the bar and hid between Jessica's legs. The opportunity would present itself, in time, he concluded.

He just had to be patient.

Jessica shifted her legs, uncomfortably, as her skin recognized the unexpected visitor hiding underneath her stool. She was nervous – he could tell. Like reading an open book, one of the collectors noticed the woman's uneasy fidgeting and decided to lean in to find out what was truly going on behind that bar.

The rush of adrenaline was stimulating for the boy – there was no time for patience; the opportunity had presented itself, certain and urgent.

The boy rose up quickly from behind the bar and fired his weapon: the bullet was certain; it perforated the curious man's chest, killing him instantly. The actual diversion it had provoked - the shock of the surprising celerity shown by Erron's lethal action was all that old Jacob had been needing since the moment those men had set foot on The Wise Bird: the bartender grabbed a bottle of wine and smashed it against the second collector's skull. The man closed his eyes as his body collapsed, falling down to the ground. The third vicious collector, finding himself outnumbered, tried to run away fearing for his life but a determined Erron executed the coward by piercing his lungs with a fatal bullet.

Another transgression – another line had been crossed.

Josephine and Jessica remained behind the bar for a moment, completely in shock. Their trembling hands were intertwined in panic. The sight of death was overwhelming – blood was everywhere, the gruesome corpses lingering heavily on the saloon floor were all they could see.

With a silent nod that expressed much more than simple appreciation for the bravery the kid had professed, the old man had no choice but to acknowledge that quality he had seen in that boy before, while they were still practicing with mere cans and bottles. Jacob had seen  _that quality of his_ , waiting to be properly shaped and ultimately released. That kid had just crossed the line separating the good from the bad; he had just become an assassin yet he wasn't overwhelmed in the slightest by his own actions. Jacob's silence was saying more than enough.

That kid had a talent for sin; he  _knew_  he had it in him.

That kid had the potential to become a monster – perhaps he  _was_  already a monster. The cruelty of death and the heavy weight of such a determining decision like taking a life didn't seem enough to reach him. Those cold, coffee eyes were more worried about cleaning up the place than succumbing to the realization that he had indeed become a murderer.

He was the son of a coffee-eyed demon, after all – the inherited cruelty suddenly seemed quite natural – the boy clearly held the power to kill someone in cold blood and not feel the slightest touch of regret or guilt.

Erron and Old Jacob buried the bodies on the backyard while the women stayed inside and cleaned up the bloody scene. They couldn't afford to raise any suspicions now – the saloon had to open its doors for its loyal patrons to have a good night just like every other night. They vowed never to say a word about the disturbing events of that afternoon: the four of them swore they would take their secret to the grave. People would search for those men, they would ask their questions and they would, in time, forget all about those missing collectors. New collectors would be summoned then, to replace the old ones, and they would deal with them as well, if necessary.

The mother, the  _then-_ aunt that had later become his secret lover and his fictitious grandfather all stared at the boy to check if he was alright – the neutrality of his quiet, unnerving expression was enough to make them shudder.

Two hours later The Wise Bird opened its doors – by the time the black night had come to wrap the Arroya landscape with its obsidian blanket, the place was already filled with grinning girls and amused patrons, just as if nothing had happened.

Jacob's eyes remained glued to that kid's cold, indifferent stare: even now, while sitting right next to his beloved Amanda, the impersonality encysted deep within those coffee eyes was clearly recreating that kid's figure, tracing the outline of the shadowed marksman he was going to be in the not-so-distant future.

Just like every other night, Amanda's father was there as well. The man was enjoying the company of three saloon girls but they weren't alone – another man was there too, making cheerful conversation with everyone sitting by that table. After a while, Mr. Nathaniel Taggart excused himself to the ladies and approached the bar with his new found friend – both men looked intensely at Amanda, almost as if pretending Erron wasn't there at all. With a smile curling up his upper lip, Nathaniel said:

"Amanda, my darling - meet my good friend, Mr. William Farindon."

* * *

  **VI – Two Train Tickets**

_July 18th, 1859_

* * *

He couldn't resist it. As weak as he was, she had the power to make him feel amazingly strong.

The rewarding sensations aroused by that familiar warmth of hers were just overwhelming. Her body was a wild bonfire calling him on time and time again.  _One last time_ , he had pleaded, succumbing helplessly to his animalistic needs and she had accepted it, giving in once again to his every demand. She had said yes, her most licentious side had been the one in control of her decisions. It was wrong; he could feel the lustful nature of the recurrent sin they were undoubtedly committing as her digits would stigmatize his skin with her constantly afire touch. He wanted to melt underneath her grasp; he was eager to long for air and to be suffocated again by that consuming mouth of hers. She got on her knees and enveloped him with her experienced mouth – that woman surely was a sinister devil corrupting him once again yet he had no choice but to comply, surrendering his free-will to the capricious desires of her untamable heart.

"Thought you said 'never again', boy," she teased him as she got up slowly, causing the boy to arch his back involuntarily; his whole body was still quivering against the bed-side table.

He smirked darkly as he got dressed and walked towards the door – he knew how things were, there was no time left to pretend he was on a social visit now. He had to go.

"This  _was_  the last time." Erron let out as certainly as possible as he buttoned up his trousers. There was something definitive about his tone but it made her smile anyway: he had sounded equally definitive many times before and yet here he was again, pleading for her touch to take him to paradise one more time.

"She's making you wait, isn't she?" Jessica asked as she lit up a cigar and checked the time.

Erron nodded as he let out a sigh full of frustration. Those five months had turned into a living hell for the enamored young lover. Mr. Farindon was interested in Amanda; he had even offered her an engagement ring. The girl didn't want to marry the middle-aged barber, she thought she was way too young to get married, let alone have children. Erron was furious about it yet he could understand Mr. Taggart's sudden desperation: the girl looked exactly like her dead mother; a simple glance was enough for the man to succumb to that never-ending source of sadness that had trapped him mercilessly since his wife's tragic passing.

But he couldn't understand why Amanda had agreed on spending so much time with Mr. Farindon. What was she trying to prove? She would spend her days with the barber and her nights with Erron behind the bar. But things changed progressively, as Arroya's old and extremely gossipy ladies started to spread the rumors of a potential engagement and, being an established aristocrat, Amanda's father was really concerned about his daughter's reputation: a saloon was not the place for such a delicate flower to bloom, the man had concluded. The girl still protested, but a part of her obeyed, quietly, almost as if being dragged down into that unstoppable, imposed union.

Desperate, Erron had knocked on their door – he got on one knee and asked for her hand in marriage.

"You got nothing to offer, boy," Nathaniel had bitterly answered that evening. Behind her father's comfortable shadow, Amanda had simply lowered her head.

Now the boy didn't even know if he still had a girlfriend or not. They had barely seen each other during the last couple of months.

"It's going to be worth the wait, trust me," Jessica said reassuringly, trying to help the distressed kid through that difficult time he was bravely facing. She walked him to the door and embraced him tightly, the teacher was finally letting go of her disciple. She knew there was nothing he could do about Amanda's impending engagement and such sad truth was heartbreaking, even for her.

Even though she had learned how to crave his body, she had always known his heart belonged to someone else. And it was right. She was a married woman, after all. There was only so much that she could offer that boy and having someone by his side, someone he loved and trusted, someone to help and ease the pain caused by his mother's fragile health had seemed like a blessing. Now the tables had turned and his eyes were embracing that darkness she had previously feared: he needed his Amanda, he could never face such an agonizing, tormenting future all on his own.

Jessica opened the door and Erron felt the inevitable fear of the unknown taking over him: letting go of Jessica suddenly seemed terrifying for his convulsed and troubled senses. He turned around and kissed the woman fiercely, his trembling hands quickly cupped her face as Jessica reciprocated the boy's wild farewell. Perhaps he was right and that was the end of their romantic rendezvous - maybe they would never see each other  _that way_  again and the feeling was both relieving and frightening at the same time. But Adrian's unexpected arrival interrupted the fiery kiss. The man grabbed Erron by his hair and kicked him out of the house. The boy stayed, encompassed by the deepest regret he had ever experienced, at the other side of the door pushing it insistently, kicking it with all his strength but it was frustratingly pointless. He screamed his lungs out, begging for Adrian to let him in: he didn't care about himself, but he worried deeply about Jessica. Helpless, the sixteen-year-old cowboy glued his ear to the front door and tried to listen: the perturbing sounds of angered yells and inextinguishable sobs were accompanied by the violent shatter of glasses and the alarming, distinctive roar of furniture being moved around rather violently. His curled up fists seemed pointless now that he had been confined to the wrong side of the door. Erron closed his eyes and lowered his head – he should have been more cautious, he should have known better.

After a moment all those sounds coming from the inside of the house had quieted and all that remained there, for the young boy to listen, was a frightening silence; a deep, agonizing silence only accompanied by an echoed, sullen sobbing that would haunt the boy for the years to come.

He cursed under his breath and left that place, feeling completely numb and nauseated. The walk back to the saloon was filled with remorse and fear: his most banal instincts had betrayed him again but now he hadn't just broken a promise to Amanda – he had put Jessica in danger and that was a fact that had already translated itself into action.

He stopped altogether, seemingly paralyzed in the middle of the street. Josephine and Jacob would be waiting for him – their faces… their eyes… there was no escaping from such sacrosanct beacons of light; not now that the thick, contaminating darkness had taken over him. The boy made up his mind and took a detour, trying to avoid the ones that were surely going to notice his shaken visage. Their questions, like unbearable burdens, had the potential to break him inside, to damage that part of himself he had been so desperately trying to save after murdering those men – The confused boy took a deep breath and walked on by, trying to get lost in those familiar streets.

As he walked by Amanda's house, the unexpected gathering caught his eye.

There were people coming in and out of the Taggart house; their fine, fancy clothes were speaking about a special occasion, a celebration of some sort, perhaps. Stranded and bewildered, Erron made his way through the crowd and saw his beloved girl holding another man's arm: Mr. William Farindon's arm. They both were slowly marching downstairs, glancing wholeheartedly at the people observing them with such inexplicable tenderness the boy soon found himself having a hard time trying to process that unfortunate scene he had involuntarily witnessed. He found it hard to believe: she was finally ready to give him up. The shiny golden ring on her finger was like a siren awakening his utmost fears - she was engaged now, engaged to somebody else. She had accepted that unthinkable possibility: she was going to marry the barber.

He frowned, helpless, as he hid his weary existence behind a chubby man clapping his hands as a cheerful salute meant to celebrate the now official couple. Still unseen by the eyes that actually mattered, the tormented boy decided to leave that damned place, the clouds of chaos raining over him were already too dense for him: he wasn't sure about Jessica's fate and now Amanda's destiny had been sealed by the girl's infuriating, insulting lack of resolve. Out in the street again, his still-shivering fingers got a hold of the revolver resting heavily in his pocket – after the incident in the saloon he had grown used to carrying a weapon with him most of the time, just in case. The tenacity that had engulfed him was simply too much to handle: Amanda had chosen her fate, but Jessica hadn't had that much of a chance.

Determined, the boy went back to his lover's house and knocked on the door insistently – but no-one answered.

Worried by the obvious, Erron hid by the privet and waited – someone had to come or leave that house sooner or later, he knew. Adrian's figure became clear after a short while. The man left the house and started to walk down the street, headed in the saloon's direction. Erron followed the notary and hit him in the back of his head with the revolver's handle. Stunned, the Spaniard began to fall down slowly but the young boy's intrepid arms caught him before the motionless bag of flesh and bones could kiss the ground. He dragged Adrian's unconscious body through the small space between the fence and the back door and executed the man in cold blood out in the backyard. Payback felt good, after all. It was a vicious, intoxicating flavor that would soon consume his palate.

Once he had wiped the tiny drops of blood that had spilled across his laconic face, the boy tried to peer through the windows, still longing to find Jessica in there but the only things he managed to see were the chaotic remains inside each room. Jessica was gone and Amanda was engaged to another man; his whole world was tumbling down again. He had to do something; start over, reject the hand he had been dealt and start his own winning streak.

Black searched his pockets until he found his old leather wallet: there they were; the two train tickets Old Jacob had ordered him to purchase just a couple days ago. The old man wanted to go to Dallas to visit some potential investors willing to help The Wise Bird in the near future – and he wanted to take the boy with him so he could see first-hand how a man was supposed to carry out a successful negotiation. Jacob had his faith in that troubled kid; he wanted the boy to take over the saloon after the bartender's inevitable retirement. Erron knew most things related to the saloon; now it was time for him to learn the boring stuff; the parts of the job that didn't involve pouring drinks or flirting with the girls.

The sight of those train tickets was convincing enough for him.

The idea had already set on his mind.

He knew what to do.

Erron had heard some rather interesting things about Dallas, the new town – surely they would be able to start anew there. He was done with Arroya; he was positive that town had nothing left to offer, that shithole was sinking but he would not be dragged down along with it. He had to get out,  _they_  had to get out.

He made his way back to Amanda's house; the destination was firmly shaped inside his eyes now. The road suddenly got filled with such heavy notions it became clear, for the first time, that that godforsaken place wasn't his home anymore. He thought about the metaphorical dome they had built up in the saloon during all those years – he hadn't even explored that much outside of those protective walls but he knew their faces, he was no stranger to their judgmental reasoning: in their eyes, he was the unwanted son of a whore and no matter what he did; he was only meant to be that. He would never be good enough to change their erroneous perception. He had been molded into a pre-conceived idea, and there was no escaping that imprisoning stereotype.

He waited patiently around the corner until the meeting was over and then, thanking the heavens for the lack of any unwanted attention, he finally surrounded the house and threw some pebbles at her window – she opened it instantaneously and signaled him to wait by the back door. The resolute boy obeyed, as he practiced the words he was about to say: he would only have one chance to make things right; he couldn't afford to waste his only opportunity with clumsy thoughts and unfinished ideas. He was going to do all the talking; he wasn't going to give her any time to think.

Amanda was in her nightgown; the chilling breeze was creating goosebumps all across her arms. She embraced herself, visibly ashamed, as he handed her one of the tickets. He knew Jacob would be mad but still, he had to try.

"We're living tonight, we can start over. You don't have to get married to that old man, you said it yourself: you don't want to, you're way too young – you want to  _see the world_." He began; his quickly-paced words were frantically trying to convince her. "You don't have to put up with your father's shit anymore, this is your chance, let's get away. We don't need this town, there's nothing for us here, let's just get the fuck out while we still can."

He looked into her big, blue eyes as his gaze started to show all those bottled-up feelings contradicting his thoughts, "I know I haven't been there for you lately, 'manda, and I'm sorry for all those shortcomings of mine – Deeply. But maybe this is our chance; maybe we can start anew…" The girl opened her mouth as a futile attempt at actually saying something but the boy went on, wisely, preventing her from speaking. "I know I've let you down. But I have faith; I know we can turn this thing around. Tonight. I'll be waiting."

He ran off as quickly as he could and went back home to pack his bags. Then he took one of Jacob's finest horses and headed for the train station where he waited for several hours as he witnessed countless people coming and going all around him, the anonymous mass of passengers seemed like a ritual in perpetual motion, reminding him of his own contradictory passivity. After a few hours, he sat on a bench, completely hopeless, and he buried his face inside his own hands: he had ruined Jacob's plans for nothing; Amanda had already made her plans for the future and those plans didn't include him.

What was he truly expecting her to do? Deep down the boy knew she would never take on his offer. That agonizing wait was only confirming his suspicious: she wasn't his anymore.

By the time he removed his hands from his face, he had already turned into someone else. His cold, coffee eyes had irreversibly darkened, that hollowed indifference had finally taken eternal residence inside his tired pupils.

July, 18th, 1859 would always be remembered by him as the day when bitterness set on his eyes for good.

July, 18th, 1859 was the day when Amanda never showed up at the station.

July, 18th, 1859 was the last day he ever saw Jessica.

* * *

  **VII – Unreadable Pieces of Paper**

_October 1st, 1859_

* * *

The silent room was unfamiliarly welcoming for the troubled boy. His life was suddenly crumbling all around his tired body: he had become a murderer yet the burden that those deaths were supposed to carry wasn't there to haunt him. There were other things haunting him; things that weighted heavier on his shoulders: his loved ones had slowly started to vanish. One by one, they were leaving him: Jessica was gone, no one knew anything about her yet he feared her spirit had met the worst possible fate. Amanda was a ghost – ever since Mr. Farindon had appeared in the scene things between the young couple had been less than pleasant. They barely spent any time together anymore, and even though she loved him, deep down Erron knew she didn't have the guts to break herself free from that arranged marriage that would definitely kill their love story. She was not the kind of woman he could keep as his secret mistress after all: she was  _the one_. Yet she wasn't ready to sacrifice herself for him, and that pained him more than anything else in the entire world.

The domestic territory had turned black for him as well: his mother's fragile health had deteriorated considerably. The doctors said that it was time to keep a strong faith, that they had seen some miraculous recoveries, that not everything was lost for the poor woman. Yet he knew their honeyed words were meant to caress his sadness and his fears; they didn't carry any truly scientific facts. They were merely trying to give him hope, they needed him to stay strong for Josephine, but the boy was no fool; he had seen that poorly disguised pity inside their eyes.

Doctors had tried to be cautious and prudent about her condition and deep down the boy was grateful for such thoughtful measures but, in the end, they all had no choice but to say the frightening word out loud:

 _Cirrhosis_.

Once that cruel word had been propelled, freed from the prison of their mouths, he knew the inevitable was about to happen. Josephine's death would be painful and it would wound him inside, irreversibly. She had brought it upon herself; he had said it many times. Yet the fact that she would be gone for good rather sooner than later was an unsettling echo revolving around him most of the time.

He was sitting by Jo's bed, witnessing the indifferent dance of the curtains like druids summoning their beloved spirits when one of the saloon girls entered the room. She walked up to him, her expression was deadly serious.

"This is for you," she said as she handed him the folded sheet of paper she was carrying. "It's from Amanda."

Erron nodded politely as he dismissed the girl then placed the letter on the bed beside his mother pretending he didn't care about its content. He was lying to himself, he knew, but Josephine's rapid deterioration was certainly taking its toll on him – he couldn't risk his already troubled heart with yet another frustration. Certain as the dawn that follows the blackest of nights his mother was about to abandon him and the words on that letter he had just received were surely meant to tell him that Josephine wouldn't be the only one leaving him behind for good.

The weight of his mother's terrible decease felt like a heavy pendulum swinging over his head with the wrath of a god. He knew what was about to happen; there was no point in hiding from the obvious. He knew this time her body would drag her down; she wasn't going to leave that bed – at least, not while still being alive. That was it, finally, the point of no return he had feared for so long.

The exhausted sixteen-year-old shook his head bluntly: he knew better than to hide cowardly in the shadowed sanctuary of unrealistic hope. He took the paper and sat by the window – the timid caress of the insipid sunlight coming through the blinds was finally making him feel  _something_. He unfolded the paper to find Amanda's childish calligraphy waiting to be read:

_I will never forget the night when you knocked on our door and asked for my hand in matrimony. My father ridiculed you and your insolent ways back then but deep down I think he knew you meant it._

_I knew you meant it._

_And I will never forget all those nights we stayed together long after the saloon had closed its doors; the way we used to talk about the future will forever be so dearly treasured within me – we should have seen the world together; I'm still certain of that._

_But even if it breaks my heart, it's time to let you go._

_I decided to marry Mr. Farindon. I cannot say I agree with my father but I understand that my sole image is enough to drive him crazy. I do look like her, Erron. I sadly do. He needs me out of his life; I get that now, and you said it yourself a thousand times already: I'm not the kind of daughter that walks out on her beloved ones and no matter how many times that man has wronged me, he is still there, among my beloved ones._

_Sometimes I wish you had the chance to meet the incredible man that he was before losing my mother. He was so different; so capable – so human. I'm sure that man would have liked you._

_I know this might feel as if I'm forcing you to move on but it's time to face the facts, my dear: we both know everything changed that night when you came over and gave me that train ticket. You had already made up your mind. You shaped this idea and now it's all you can see: you don't belong here anymore._

_But I do._

_Please don't be mad at me; I can already see your frowning face telling me that I've always chosen the easy way out. You're probably right. But it's the best I can do. Remember all those times I told you that I didn't understand how you could love your mother so much in spite of all her coldness and indifference? This is exactly the same; this is how much I love my father._

_Don't you think, nor even for a minute, that I'm meant to hurt you or that I'm taking this decision lightly because I'm not: I've spent enough nights trying to find a way for all this to work out fine for us but I can't seem to find any and time is running out. You're free now, Erron. You don't owe me anything. Just do what you know you are going to do: wait. For her to be gone, for me to be married. Then leave; I can feel you already gone. Just know that I love you; I shall always love you._

_The wedding will be celebrated on November 13th. Perhaps celebration is a strong word, but you know what I mean. I thought it would be better if you learned this from me. Please don't do anything stupid – I'm begging you; please, please don't ruin the beautiful memory of you that will accompany me for the rest of my days._

_Please take care and look after your mother – she's the one that truly needs you now._

_Amanda._

Each one of her words, spiraling towards him like a phantasmagoric animation, was precluding the little flame of hope he had reserved just for her. Infuriated, the boy tore the paper into tiny, uneven pieces as he cried like a child, unable to believe that Amanda was undoubtedly ready to give up on everything that they had dreamt about together. As the tears streamed down his face, the helpless sixteen-year-old got on his knees and collected each fragment of her letter: no matter how devastating those lines were for him, he just couldn't find the strength to throw them away. Those words he had just read were hers, after all. That damaged letter would be the last piece of her that he would be able to call his own.

He sat down on the floor and kept the tiny pieces of paper inside his curled fist as the darkness of the room enveloped him. Those fragments of his dying love, now resting heavily inside his hand, were a traumatic whirlpool of sepia-colored memories that gravitated menacingly towards him.

* * *

  **VIII – A Blue-Covered Bible**

_November 13th, 1859_

* * *

The minute he saw the priest standing sternly by his mother's bed he knew he had to get away. Run, as fast as humanly possible. Get out of that room; escape from that heartbreaking sight. He didn't want to witness his own mother's last rites. He wasn't ready.

He would never be ready.

He left the saloon and started to wander those streets without a clear destination – those nomadic feet were marching blindly, trying to get lost among the faces walking by his side.

He knew it wasn't right, he knew he wasn't supposed to – especially on such a surely busy day for her. Yet his feet kept moving, relentlessly marching as if driven by an unstoppable force, unmistakably headed for her door. He needed to see  _her_ , he needed  _her_.

"What are you doing here? My father and  _Mr. Farindon_  are already waiting for me by the sacristy," the bride said the minute she saw the boy standing helplessly by her door. She wasn't expecting him, he could tell.

Erron lowered his head, she had asked him not to show up that day after all. Yet he needed her. Now more than ever. As his gaze finally met hers, the anguish imprinted on those reddened eyes of his was enough for the girl to guess what was going on. She rushed him inside and closed the door behind her – the house was quiet even though they would be celebrating a wedding in no time.

"Wait here," she whispered before going upstairs. After a while she was back, carrying a blue-covered book – she handed it to him and said: "This was my mother's bible. It has helped me a lot during those difficult times; I know you're not a great believer – but I want you to have it anyway." Her arms flew to embrace him with such tenderness the boy couldn't help but to break down and cry like a miserable child, anticipating his imminent loss.

"You don't have to do this," Erron said as he broke the embrace, "we can still leave this damn town and start over." Her teared up gaze was silently telling him that he had said the words she wasn't longing to hear. All the determination she had shown in the past was nowhere to be found now. She had made up her mind – she was finally ready to let him go. Yet seeing him again was clearly harder than she had expected. That's why she had begged him not to come: she knew those coffee-colored eyes of his were powerful enough to make her crumble; that fragile boy crying right in front of her was shattering her world into a million pieces.

As she slowly gathered all the love she still had for that sixteen-year-old boy, she kissed him – the blessing of that beloved mouth of hers was soothing for his damaged senses. Her tongue, exploring every inch of his tongue, was like a comforting balm slowly washing away his fears. He slid his hand underneath her petticoat instinctively, knowing that he was not allowed to wander that uncharted territory. Yet he couldn't help it; the magic of her mere existence was calling him on, making him shiver like a solitary leaf carried by the merciless wind.

Amanda's soft and warm hand began to lead him upstairs – for the first time since meeting that girl he was finally visiting her bedchamber. Enraptured by the bittersweet moment, Amanda cupped his face with her steady hands and kissed him again, this time more fiercely than before. The white dress was resting peacefully on the bed; the sight was intoxicating and agonizing for the boy. She could have been  _his_  bride. She  _should_  have been his bride.

He envisioned her as he held her close, walking down the aisle enveloped in white. The image of such a delightful, pristine dream suddenly seemed unbearably far from where he was. As shadows began to cloud his face, Amanda's miraculously blue eyes were helplessly professing all the love the girl had been saving just for him. She took off her petticoat and stood naked in front of his wide-eyed gaze. He should have said no, he knew she wasn't meant to be his yet he couldn't help it. Their goodbye was meant to be remembered; they would never get to see the world together yet the world they had  _created_  together was still there, alive and undeniable, just like that splendorous body of hers – within his reach for the first time; finally freed from all its bindings.

The boy enveloped her with his strong arms like anchors trying to get a hold of her – a celestial hold of her that would, hopefully, last forever even if only in his dreams and memories. He knew that body would no longer be his after that day and the certainty was bitter and inexplicably bleak for his already depressing reality. Amanda's hands started to romance him as she quickly unbuttoned his white shirt to finally explore his naked torso – those wandering, restless digits were summoning the man in him, the one that had been waiting, eternally, to be released by those powerful fingers of hers.

He laid her on the bed with such delicacy and tenderness that the girl couldn't help but smile: long gone were the days when his body would venture the depths of other women's curves and shapes; now it was her time to be explored. She had anticipated that moment, her heart drenched in the intoxicating wine of poisonous lust. She still wanted him; she still needed him like that day under the rain; she had seen all of his colors and she had craved him with such desire and hunger that now, having him naked upon her own nakedness felt as special as if that glorious, symbolic rain was suddenly pouring all over her again – she had rediscovered her love for him; only now it was too late.

He held her close as he slowly made his way inside her. Amanda shifted slightly under his tight grip, trying her best not to let that awkward pain she was beginning to feel get in their way – she had heard about that infamous first time, after all; they all said it was supposed to hurt a little, yet that inspiring smile upon her face, welcoming his long-awaited presence with an unimaginable bonfire burning inside those blue eyes of hers was melting his hardened façade, slowly, mercilessly recreating the gentle boy he had once been.

God, she loved that boy.

The future mercenary circled her rosy nipples with his explorative tongue before resuming his pace. That flavor of her skin was simply intoxicating – he could have tasted her forever, he admitted to himself as he increased his speed. Amanda had no control over the things she was feeling, she didn't know what it was that she was supposed to be feeling but it was so overwhelming nonetheless, so profoundly nurturing that the girl cried out his name; her voice an echoed mixture of pleasure and pain. Her every moan was a necessity in itself. She buried her fingertips in his back; her nails were gentle torturers digging his skin with such hunger. Everything that she was feeling seemed so unreal that the girl even allowed herself to fantasize and wonder, even if only briefly, about the delusional chance of being dreaming. That had to be a dream; after all, she concluded. Only it wasn't. He was finally awakening the woman in her. She had been waiting for that moment; anticipating the pleasure, daydreaming about his skin and her skin melting together, becoming one,  _finally one_.

As the boy reached his climax she rejoiced her amazed eyes with that face enveloped in the sweetest of ecstasies. That was the face she would remember for as long as she lived, she thought. Now her eyes were the ones blinking unceasingly as if taking his picture. Each frame would be treasured among her fondest memories; never to be forgotten.

As he leaned in for one last kiss Amanda embraced him tighter than ever: that was her silent farewell. Erron caressed her cheek and ran his fingers through her auburn hair – he could never fall for someone else; not as madly as he had fallen for  _her_.

They stayed in bed for a brief moment. Their naked bodies, covered in sweat, were still reeling in the memory they had just created together. After a while they got up and dressed – the boy looked over his shoulder and lowered his head once again: that was it. That was goodbye. That white dress discarded on the floor now was all the proof he needed.

"The Bible," she indicated quickly as they both went downstairs, noticing the boy had forgotten all about the blue covered book she had given him. As he took the book from her hands their fingers touched, for the last time. That final tickling would accompany the mercenary for the years to come. He would long to feel that sensation again but no sensation could ever be compared to that one  _last_  sensation.

"I love you," she whispered in his ear.

Those words he had been longing to hear her say for so long felt like daggers piercing his body – that elocution, simple yet immensely meaningful, was too much for him. Feeling completely overwhelmed, the boy looked into her eyes with an intensity she had never seen before: she understood the feeling was mutual, yet the lump in his throat was forcing him to remain silent.

He left her house and glued his back to the nearest wall almost instantly, feeling weak and abandoned. He had done it; he had finally said goodbye to the greatest love of his life. She was bound to marry another man in a matter of hours – that impossible future that they had planned together had finally been erased for good.

He should have said, "I love you too." That silence, stretched in time like a cobweb wrapping up the most sensible part of his nomadic heart, would haunt him almost every night. Even now, that the accumulated dust of more than one hundred and fifty years of memories has covered that heartbreaking scene in the theatre of his mind.

He should have said "I love you."

He should have said  _I love you_.

Black wandered those intrinsically familiar streets, waiting for the miracle that would never happen. That landscape seemed foreign for him now; the certainty was undeniable: he didn't belong there anymore. Arroya was no longer his home. As he walked on by, he tried to capture the essence of that place deep within his pupils – he knew the image was meant to fade in time yet the hope still persisted: he wasn't interested in remembering that town for geographical memorabilia after all – that portion of land had deeper roots for him. All his beloved ones had been anchors for him to stay for as long as he had done. No place in that town could feel impersonal to his downbeat senses: each street, each corner had a story to tell and those people he had held so close to his troubled heart were the main protagonists of such dear stories.

That way he would never forget them.

Back then, oblivion seemed like the most unforgivable of sins.

As he made his way back to The Wise Bird, the saddened faces waiting for him by the door were enough for the boy to get the message: Josephine Turner, aged 30, had died. He ran upstairs to find Jacob Black, his life mentor, sinking in a sea of tears and anguish. Erron embraced the old man tightly – he had already lost a daughter before and Jessica's sudden disappearance had felt as if the cruel repetition of such a tragic event had aimed for the good man's heart. The sight of Josephine, resting peacefully, at last, was both heartbreaking and consoling for the two men mourning the late singer. She had suffered so much; she had struggled so much to overcome that painful beginning of hers that the quieted expression of that whitened face of hers seemed like a breath of fresh air for them now: Erron's diabolic progenitor had ruined her life, yet she had tried. With flaws and insecurities, she had tried her best.

They buried her on that same day. Erron and Jacob Black were the only ones in the precarious cemetery, paying their respects to their beloved Jo. The evocative sound of the church bells indicated the boy that not only his mother had passed, not only Amanda Taggart had now become Mrs. Amanda Farindon –  _his_  time in Arroya was completely over.

They walked back to the saloon in silence, the old bartender was saddened to see him go yet the man understood that trying to hold him back would be viciously cruel, to say the least. He had always promoted that wild boy's capabilities; now he wouldn't be the one to hold him prisoner in a town that was clearly rejecting him.

The boy stayed up all night, collecting his final thoughts regarding his imminent departure. Leaving Jacob seemed cruel and unnecessary, but deep down he knew he couldn't stay any longer. He wouldn't survive another day in that hell of a town. Even though he was still in his room, as soon as the impending dawn had started to cover the rooftops with a yellowish tone, he was already gone.

Erron packed his bags and stood in the front porch for a moment – there were a thousand words already choking in his throat yet he couldn't find a way to let them flow. He wasn't good at farewells, he sadly realized as the evident misconnection between his mouth and brain became evident. Jacob had heard the boy's footsteps heading downstairs – now the old man was staring at the boy from behind the bar; his teared up gaze was already describing that unbearable solitude that would accompany him for the rest of his days.

As the sixteen-year-old boy’s exhausted yet determined bones started to forsake that cursed town that he had called his own all his life, the choir of avid voices carried by the wind were whispering Arroya's early morning round of restless gossip:

" _Her father nearly killed her; she wasn't a virgin anymore when she married the barber, the man claims he never even touched a hair in her head before the wedding night…"_

" _It must have been that boy, that one, you know? From the saloon, the singer's son. Poor kid, so troubled…"_

He put on his hat and started marching.

They all had made their own choices, after all.


	14. On the Mend

Arc II

Chapter XIV

**On the Mend**

**(Of Past Regret and Future Fear)**

* * *

  _"Was our life nothing more than a sequence of anonymous screams in a desert of indifferent stars?"_

Ernesto Sábato – The Tunnel

* * *

Imperative became then, the ulterior need for the man to get up and put everything back in its rightful place. He was Erron Black after all, and while he could understand her sadness and frustration, he was still a Kahn's employee – his position was more than just a mere figure stuck in a system of balanced legislation and politics; he deserved respect. He was the sole peacemaker trying to get his job done in the most hostile of environments; an enforcer of Outworld's law and justice, imparting such inalterable terror and distance with his presence alone. He was the embodiment of the private siege that his prolific longevity had provided him with; it was true that he had been through both mire and confusion but he was still there, alive and kicking, and all those mouths calling him names that were supposed to hurt his pride, all the colors behind the assumption in those voices still calling him a heartless mercenary were not enough to reach him.

Yet those iridescent, ignited blue eyes of hers were audaciously daring him to get up and do something more than just stating the obvious; to embrace both his guilt and his remorse, to finally give in to the menacing darkness about to devour his whole existence. Her oceanic gaze, towering over him from such unreachable heights and covering him with its maternal blanket made of precious rivulets fragmenting the richest of azures, aquamarines and indigos he had ever seen was tormenting enough for the sage, older than time cowboy to stay right where he was - with his butt on the ground and his battered yet always confrontational spirit gravitating helplessly towards the same dark hurricane of aching memories that she herself had summoned without much effort.

The seemingly fearless fierce that had guided her arms when she had successfully tried to push him away at any cost, followed almost immediately by  _those_  words, had been too much for his battered senses to handle. Suddenly all those beloved, antique faces from a reality so old it almost felt alien for him now seemed clear enough for the mercenary to finally remember everything: their facial features, each and every one of their names – places he hadn't visited in over a century; every scenario and every actor was now a vivid ghost coming back to haunt him with unprecedented precision.

Yet one thing remained unaltered, its heretic clairvoyance imprisoned and buried under a sea of beloved fossils and mummified feelings: Josephine's voice, forever secluded in the confines of his guilt, was still the only elusive pearl in a necklace of yesteryears and bygones that had finally regained its original shape. Each and every one of the beads, now weighing heavily around his neck, was forcing the old man to remember that he was, indeed, all alone in the universe.

It had been his own choice; the solid foundation for the house of cards he had been building ever since leaving Arroya. He had become the architect of his own free will, and now he had hell to pay.

All alone – in  _any_  possible universes.

Aalem's body, still resting motionless on the ground, was confirming that undeniable truth he had tried to face on countless occasions while attempting to fool his own mind into thinking that the hazardous path of solitude he had been exploring for so long was his own scroll to unroll: he was alone; more than alone – he only had himself; a man who had chosen to leave and to forget. A mercenary who had turned his back on everyone he had ever loved. Now he could finally see it shinning clearly beyond the velvety haze of doubts and foolish hopes: he was, indeed, the offspring of a whore and a coffee-eyed demon.

The flesh of their flesh and the sin of their sins.

Black flexed his knees until the joints were almost touching his chest; his tired sight wandered about the chaotic surroundings: the cabin seemed so big now.

Company had never been a necessity for the lonesome cowboy – God, he had proven time and again that he was better off alone, that no companion was good enough to travel that deserted road beside him. Solitude was a choice,  _his_ choice. But now, that cabin he had built so long ago seemed unbearably bigger – the Edenian kid's lifeless body, echoing the furtive sounds of his own guilt and regret through the most exasperating of silences, had finally turned into yet another intangible anima for him to talk to.

His body at night, stuck in the low light, would reach for those long gone souls that had once been his.

Only now, no one would answer his questions.

The monologues of his mind would always vociferate the same old stories – his very own spirit, already too tired of being the sole companion for his nearly bicentennial body, had become unable to change or even alter the sickening tales he would repeat, night after night, during those mad rounds of conversations picturing him as a man who was himself no more, yet, still forced to taste his own erratic essence, seemed to be eternally condemned to witness the struggle between his past and his uncertain future.

There was a time when he could bring himself to imagine a different ending for his own stories; a happier version, perhaps. But now all those illusionary fantasies seemed forever lost in a sea of contrived impulses and irrefutable truths. No more happy endings. No more relieving versions of his own private tragedies.

Even though her arms had pushed him away only minutes ago, Alex was still there, as lost in the time-space continuum of that godforsaken cabin as he was. There she stood, immaculate in the aura of despair and insurrection, still in front of him, still within his reach. The woman had covered her face with her hands trying to hide the tears that were streaming down her swollen, reddened cheeks. That trembling body of hers, fumbling towards the darkest of sorrows, still needed to be sheltered.

Black stood up slowly and grabbed the woman by her shoulders. She leaned in instinctively and rested her head on his chest.

Black ran his fingers through her messy hair, "you should get some rest," he whispered, "I'll take care of  _them_." His gloomy eyes glanced over the chaotic room: it was the second time since meeting the Earthrealm doctor that the woman was forced to coexist with corpses scattered all around her. Back then it had been Harry the one on the floor; now it was Aalem's turn, and the sight was heartbreaking for both of them only the mercenary knew that he had to find the strength to go on: clean the place, bury the kid, send his message and get back to the palace. The little grasp of sanity guiding him through that dark hour was enough for him to realize that there was no time to waste.

The irony was, once again, agonizingly tormenting for the 173-year-old cowboy: even though he couldn't age and patience had become one of his greatest virtues now that time was being conceived inside a perpetual hourglass for him, he had never allowed himself the time to actually mourn someone. His own life choices had never provided him with that option and deep down, the ex-Earthrealmer was grateful for that: an eternity of sadness and sorrow was simply not worth living – not even for a cold-hearted scumbag like the one he had become.

Alex sighed as she let go from the protective stronghold of Black's body – the woman nodded in silence as she took a step backward and rubbed her reddened eyes with her fingertips: the sight of a concerned Black startled her for a moment, as her blurred vision fought against the incoming waves of tiredness threatening her whole, shaken system. As the woman retreated to the mercenary's bedchamber, the eerie shadows calling her on from the small corridor enveloped her almost gravitating body in a blanket of untouchable grey – the lightness of such a downbeat existence was almost making her hover in space; keeping her tormenting spirit from actually touching the floor beneath her feet. The ghostly sight was both immensely endearing and devastatingly cruel for the mesmerized gunman; enraptured by her figure being summoned by the light once again: that special spectacle of secrets and revelations was still enticing for the rather simple man witnessing her oneiric journey.

As soon as she disappeared behind the door Black made his way to the backyard and began digging – even though he knew he couldn't stay long, deep down the mercenary was certain that Dexitis' son deserved a proper funeral. With the sight of his own crimson blood still streaming down his wounded hand, Black understood that the tragic predicament of having to dig Aalem's grave was entirely his fault; the kid had died because of his own indolence and unskillfulness: he could have killed that menacing man by the mountainside the minute he first saw him yet he waited, he had put both Alex and Aalem in danger just to prove a point - that he was better, that he was deadlier than the rebel-seeker. But the outcome of his inept interaction was simply unacceptable.

Aalem should have lived, he was certain of that, and so the kid's death would weight upon him, impending like an inescapable doom waiting to corrupt the remains of his already troubled soul. By the time he had finished digging, the earth itself felt as if it had cracked open below his tired feet - Black fell helpless on his knees, exhausted and heartbroken. He covered his face with his muddy fingers and cried: the hurricane of memories that Alex had triggered was nothing in comparison to the cold, unsettling present he was supposed to face. He went back inside and wrapped Aalem up with an unused white sheet; he carried the boy outside and laid him on his grave – that was it, he thought, the final destination for a young, innocent life that should have seen the light of countless iridescent dawns.

Before covering up his fallen ally with the dirt and the dust that were about to shelter that tender body from the dangers of a world that could harm him no more, Black kneeled down before Aalem's grave and took a deep breath, his lips were already betraying him.

"I want you to tell your father that I did my best;" the saddened mercenary whispered, "and that I miss him, greatly. And in case my mother is there, please tell her I miss her too."

Alex embraced him from behind, putting her arms around Black's tired shoulders.

"I thought you would want to be with him," Black began, with his eyes still fixed on the wrapped up boy in the grave. "He would have wanted you to be with him, I know," a bittersweet half smile was timidly curling up his lips, "I was about to call you, in case you wanted to say goodbye to him," he said as he covered her cold hands with his own.

"Black, your hand," Alex noticed, "it's covered in dirt. It's gonna get infected."

"It's alright," Black replied softly as he stood up again, causing the woman to stand up as well.

As the dirt began to cover the boy slowly, transgressing the figurative form of a loved one that had been irrevocably left behind, Black's heavy shoulders started to feel the real burden brought up by Aalem's unexpected loss – the mercenary wiped his sweaty forehead with his one good hand: traces of blood, sweat and dirt combined to create a mud so contaminating Black felt his own skin gradually turning to stone. The first drops of rain were the silent witnesses of his sudden transformation; as the water descended from the sky, cascading all over him in a contained rush streaming down the incipient furrows of his face, Black took a good look at his own arms and hands: the only thing he could see was a body covered in scars and cuts, his skin was impregnated by the marks left by the unfair machinery of violence; he had transformed himself into the image of war itself.

The soldier, the gun for hire, the outlaw, the mercenary – he had become the reflection in a mirror he couldn't look at no more. Suddenly time had vanished in the hourglass of his very own ironic existence – he had been alive for so long yet the beginning and the end seemed blurred synonyms for his devastated senses.

He should have never existed but he was real, real as the sin that had corrupted his then-innocent mother with such unrelenting violence and outrage. He should have been a son, but he had been abandoned. His mother rejected him for considering the devil's offspring and his father, that coffee-eyed demon; had tattooed all his sins all over him. He should have been a boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband, yet his love had been ripped off from the hungry desires of his tender arms. He should have been a father- yet the seed he had provided the world with had been killed prematurely, never allowing his most sacred, paternal instincts to harvest the fruit of his true legacy – that unborn child, perhaps his most intrinsic and sincere act of altruistic love, was the final sin that had corrupted the already damaged fragments of his soul. He should have been so many things - yet the vacuum inside his chest was making him cruise towards a whole new nothingness: a brand new hollowness he couldn't outrun.

Like a shot in the dark, Alex's eyes glancing over his deadpan expression were once more the anchors trying to bring him back to reality. The woman, noticing the dangerous detachment in his gaze, grabbed him by the arm and led him deeper into the darkness of the backyard, to the canopy made by branches and little twigs intertwined like a natural fabric providing shelter from the storm about to rage on them. They sat on a log in silence as the woman began to run her fingers through the scars of his arms. Such tenderness, he knew, wasn't meant for a man like him.

"No man should die a virgin," Black let out softly after a while, trying to find some ease in the helping warm sensation of genuine human contact. Her balsamic touch and such candor in her eyes were helping him through his dark moment of inner contemplation.

The woman smiled, frankly, as she tugged her auburn hair behind her ears. Her intrepid gaze was still traveling the length of his skin: the scorched metal that had once branded his shoulder with the unmistakable stigmata of outlawry and captivity; his innuendo of personal convictions and ideals subjugated by the dominance of an alien idiosyncrasy. The cuts scattered on his arms and forearms, seen like the improvised calendar that recluses carve into prison walls while they wait for a treacherous sense of liberty that remains elusive, were the impervious marks of time slipping through his fingers.

"Do we still have any Wildrose left?" She asked, her voice weak, absorbed in his untold stories.

"I could use a drink right now," the mercenary confessed as he extended his numb legs.

"That's not what I meant," she explained as she cupped Black's damaged hand with her own pale digits. "It has alcohol, doesn't it?"

"Enough to dope a rhino," the cowboy chuckled helplessly.

"Be right back, then," Said Alex immediately, and she stood up and retreated to the inside of the cabin. After a while she was outside again, carrying the bottle of Wildrose and a clean towel. She sat back down right next to the mercenary and grabbed his hand: "This might hurt."

"Don't," Black commanded bluntly, "that's the last bottle. I don't have the recipe, it was Dexitis' secret, he passed it onto his son, if you waste that bottle on me, their legacy is over."

Alex shook her head in silence as she contemplated his unprecedented fragility, "their legacy cannot be contained inside a bottle, Black - and you know it." she said with a timid grin full of understanding. He was a man of melancholy, she was well aware of that fact by now, yet his hand needed the astringent properties of alcohol: the laceration was bad enough to damage his nerves; the amount of blood he had lost, combined with the dirt and the mud that was contaminating the wound was menacing enough for the doctor to worry about that affected man sitting right next to her.

"Nate, my boyfriend," Alex began as she grabbed his hand once again and poured some of the liquid on the wound, the mere sound of that name emerging from her lips was enough for his face to contort in disgust: Nate, Nathan,  _Nathaniel_ , once again that name was lingering there, floating uninvited among his eternal demons and his conflicting ghosts, "he used to tell me that it was better not to get too attached to my mundane possessions; material things, you know?" The stinging sensation and the ardor he was feeling was making him curse under his breath. "He was always the one to tell me to let go from all materialism, he didn't want me to be a material person," her soothing voice was slowly distracting him from the pain she was making him endure. "I had a box of memories from our relationship: movie tickets, restaurant napkins, love letters… but when I left my parents' home and moved to my own apartment, the box got lost. I was devastated; it felt as if I was losing an actual part of our love. He calmed me down then, I still remember: he made me see that what we had could not be contained inside a box; that there wasn't a big enough box to keep our love imprisoned." Alex confessed as she began to rub his skin with the towel.

"He was so Zen," she reflected tenderly.

"Was?" The bounty hunter asked instinctively, as his eyes found hers.

The sole notion of finding out that the desired woman had a husband, a fiancé, a suitor, a boyfriend or even a lover was enough to drive him crazy. The primal roar of the alpha male willingly entering the most instinctive of competitions would be livid inside his hungry eyes. Perhaps Amanda became his infatuation because her own father and even Jessica were actively willing to see him fail. Perhaps that's why he could never bring himself to sincerely love Annie – that love of hers implied no effort on his part, there was no fight, no struggle – no victory over someone else. Alex's case was profusely different – there was a boyfriend, indeed, but there wouldn't be any showdown between the contestants: the man wasn't there, Alex herself wasn't even sure if she still had a boyfriend or not. He couldn't fight a ghost - God, he knew he couldn't fight a ghost. Even though it would be seen as an easy win for his tempested senses and that he was indeed an unscrupulous opportunist, that uncomfortable dichotomy of hers was just another example of the woman's chiaroscuros, bringing the light into his shadows and his shadows into the light.

"You've changed," Erron stated after a while. The time he had taken to contemplate that woman's softened yet saddened expression had indeed paid off: "Did he show you the letter?"

Alex nodded silently; betraying the fallen Edenian with her simple assertion. Even though she had promised the kid she wouldn't tell Black, staying true to such blinding loyalty seemed utterly pointless now.

"I'm not looking for sympathy," the lonesome cowboy said bitterly as he noticed her eyes trying to create a bridge between them.

"I get it; you had no one: no friends, no family - that's why you came here." Alex retorted as she noticed Black's visage suddenly darkening again.

"I never really had a family; I grew up inside a dystopian assemble of people I held very close to my heart. But they were more of a symbolic family to me than an actual one; my mother was my only real relative.  _My_  family never existed. I should have had one, but I bet you already know that story by now," he spat bitterly, "if you read Annie's letter, that is."

The nurse in the photograph was the embodiment of love. Those burning eyes of hers, expressing such devotion, such proximity – Alex's inquisitive gaze found Black's while the question, still lingering before her eyes, was fighting for an imminent release.

"Why do you have that letter?" She asked. "I mean, did she ever get to send it or did you find out after she was gone?" The nightmare of such a cruel scenario was enough to make her shiver.

The mercenary shook his head as an unbearable silence engulfed him.

"Did you know she was pregnant with your child?" Alex went on, stepping on the very edge of his sorrow.

"Had no clue," Black confessed as his curled fist trapped the towel still drenched in alcohol, "should have known, I guess. I found out about the child when I recovered the letter from the fire."

Then she understood: they had burnt the place with the nurse inside. Her charred body was more than just another loss for him: they had scorched his entire future.

"Don't give me that look –" he begged, "I'm not a broken toy."

"But when you  _did_  find out," Alex began, unsure where her curiosity was leading her.

"I never wanted to be a father, never even crossed my mind. God knows I didn't want a child back then. I was 22 when  _that_  happened; you know the only thing that was on my mind? By the time my mom died, I was 16. I was already older than she was when she had me. And still, I had no intentions of becoming a father," he confessed with reddened eyes – the kohl that had concealed his emotions on countless occasions before was simply not enough now to successfully barricade the cascading feelings aroused by his corrosive, unburied past. "Guess I wasn't a good son. Maybe that's why I could never envision myself as a father." Black said as he stood up and marched again, his skin welcoming the unceasing rain once more. He produced an improvised cross made by two branches and placed it on top of Aalem's grave with one smooth kick.

"That's why I chose Edenians," Black told Alex raising his voice since the woman was still under the protective canopy a few feet away from where he was now. "I was tired of watching people wither and die all around me. Now Edenians, I know only a handful of them can be trusted, but at least, they last longer."

" _Love is a many splendored thing,_ " Alex reflected as she got up and abandoned the sheltering canopy – she stood right next to him and said: "the nurse; I saw the picture in your box - that woman truly loved you."

She placed her hands on his tired shoulders and they sat down on the ground in front of Aalem's grave. Neither Black nor the woman could have been affected by the raining sky above them - they didn't mind the rain anymore; that treasured moment of mutual trust and much-needed understanding was more important now than the sudden inclemency of the weather. "The way she looked at you, the words she used in that letter to talk about you… I almost felt as if she was talking about an entirely different person; someone who was a million years away from this man I've come to know but, in hindsight, I'm glad I found this testimony of her love for you; you were loved once, you were once fully capable of awakening those feelings inside someone else so don't be that hard on yourself now." Alex went on as she crossed her legs.

"I didn't love her back," Black confessed rather coldly, almost ashamed by his own untamable feelings, "it's a complete mystery to me how the heart can sometimes fall for the wrong person, even when the right person is standing there, right in front of you, pregnant with your child, worshiping every single thing you do or say - but you don't even notice them. Amanda wasn't the one for me; Annie was. Yet I couldn't love her; I was very fond of her but that wasn't love. I still can't love her - today; it's a fight between the feeling and the reasoning that I cannot control." He looked inside Alex's eyes trying to find shelter from his own inner storm gathering inside.

"Amanda… was she your wife?" Alex asked.

"She should have been."

The words Aalem had told her resounded inside her head as a sagely reference for her to hold on to the helpless mercenary:  _he is what he is; nothing more, nothing less_. The woman ran her wet fingers through his messy hair; she had never seen him so vulnerable before; not even  _that_ night. Black reciprocated the comfortable proximity she was offering by putting his strong arms around her shoulders, then he looked at Aalem's grave and said:

"The night I caught him going through my stuff I beat him up so hard I ended up with two broken fingers myself," a warm smile started to finally curl up his upper lip, " _it wasn't yours for the takin'_  I told him;  _if only your father was here he would beat the shit out of you. But he's not, and I am the closest thing you have to a father now – I guess teaching you some manners is up to me now_ ," the mercenary remembered.

“He wanted me to stop but he was proud and damn stubborn. So he kept his mouth shut. I wasn't upset because he had uncovered my secrets - that's not what makes me see red all around. It's the face that comes right after that, the  _poor thing_  face. I can't take it," Black continued, looking right into her eyes. "In the end, I was the only one in true pain. The physical pain that the brat was enduring was nothing in comparison to the pain I felt while beating him – I cared about that boy, I never understood why but I did. Perhaps he was my one true chance for experiencing something close to fatherhood, perhaps I felt like I owed it to his father. I really don't know," Black concluded bitterly as his sight got lost in an imaginary horizon.

"A truly caring father doesn't abandon his child in the middle of nowhere, at the mercy of nature and deadly creatures like the one he was monitoring out there, all alone by the mountainside. Let alone the fact that you knew someone was out there, lurking in the dark, waiting for the right moment to attack us - and you did nothing about it," she didn't want to sound harsh but deep down she knew she was right. Aalem should have lived and Black should have been Black – only he had been too late.

The battered cowboy said nothing in return – he was impervious to her words because her accusations and his accusations were the same thing now, her voice and his voice were telling the same story: it was indeed his fault, and the young Edenian's death was the cross he would have to bear for all eternity.

"I didn't mean to…" Alex began, noticing his saddened expression.

"I know." The mercenary answered simply, offering her a hand for the woman to stand up.

They stood up in silence and went back inside the cabin – Alex took a blanket and covered Pareedis' body with it then turned around and looked at Black, the question in her eyes was quietly interrogating the cowboy about the uncertain destiny of the attacker's dead body. Finding no response from Black, the woman kneeled down in front of Pareedis and uncovered the Outworlder's head – she ran her fingers through the cavity caused by Black's bullet when the mercenary's hand surprised her: Black surrounded her from behind, causing the puzzled woman to stand up again, instinctively. He sat her down on the table and started to clean up her skin with a clean cloth soaked in water,

"You have Aalem's blood all over you," he said as he carefully cleaned up her face, arms, and hands. "Annie herself got also covered in kid Rolland's blood, I had to clean her up as well that day," he remembered, the incipient love in his eyes was nearly paternal. "If you saw the picture of my group you must have seen him, then."

"The names were blurred," Alex said.

"I know. He was barely fourteen; maybe fifteen. He had lied in his application form; he wanted to be a soldier,” he told her proudly, raising a stoic eyebrow to further illustrate his honorable tale. "One day we were ambushed by the enemy. We had to run; it may have seemed coward, but running our asses off was the only chance we had. We were bathing near a river, we were completely unarmed. But a piece of shrapnel caught Rolland and it entered his neck, opening up his jugular vein. We carried him for as long as we could and called the nurses… Annie was the only one of them who actually tried to help the kid. She was pale and about to faint but while the others screamed horrified in the back of that room, Annie stuck two fingers into that boy's neck to try to stop the bleeding. She tried hard not to look at the boy; her stomach must have turned inside out…" he remembered.

"But he had lost so much blood… I knew he wasn't gonna make it. So I looked at Annie; I asked her for forgiveness, and I ended the kid myself."

Silence encompassed them once more, as the mercenary's hands kept on trying to clean the doctor's gruesomely stained skin.

"They'll know it was you," Alex expressed her concern in a low tone, looking straight into his eyes.

"The rebel seekers will know it was me. That's precisely the point," Black answered as he rubbed the piece of cloth against her temples.

"Not the rebel seekers - the Kahn." She explained, worried about him. "There are things you can't explain. Are you ready to explain everything that has happened since the day we met? I'm a fugitive now, Black," she placed her hand upon his, instantly stopping those fingers taking such good care of her for the very first time. The woman stood up, resolute, and explained:

"The fatal wound is in the boy's head," she began "are you the only one with guns, at least, this type of weapons?"

"Remember those men back in your house? They had guns," he pointed out as he crossed his arms over his chest, visibly absorbed by her clinical demonstration but altogether ready to refute.

"Alright, maybe the weapon itself is not necessarily going to lead them back to you. But your hand is injured as well, perhaps they´ll find that suspicious."

"What are you, the Outworld police?" Black taunted her darkly. "I hurt myself while hunting. The Kahn knows I like a good hunt in my free time. But since you're so worried about my luck, or the possible lack of it…" Black went back outside and came back in a matter of seconds carrying the shovel he had used to dig Aalem's grave.

"Making it look like a traumatic brain injury or a cranial fracture with compression or maybe even an intracranial injury won't disguise the actual wound,"she pointed out but Black moved nearer and inspected the corpse: he cocked his head quite pensively, then used his index finger to create invisible circles hovering mid-air, signaling the Outworlder's head:

"So, this is the problem," the cowboy said.

"Yes," the woman retorted as her fingers ventured to trace invisible lines and diagrams all over the dead man's head: "you see, I assume the bullet entered his mouth, and the exit wound shows,"

"Fine, then." Black interrupted her. "Move, please," he said as he outstretched his right arm, signaling the woman to make room for him to maneuver. The mercenary held the shovel above Pareedis' neck and with one brutal thrust, he decapitated the lifeless body using the sharp edge of the shovel. "Better now?" He asked, satisfied by his own practicality and effectiveness. "Wrap 'em up separately - the head and the rest of the body." He commanded as he retreated to his room. He emerged from the obscure corridor a few moments later; he had changed his clothes and had geared up for the long journey ahead of him.

Alex handed him the two sinister packages she had prepared for him.

"You've changed," Black discovered for the second time that night. "When did you start thinking like a criminal?" he asked, mildly amused.

"I don't think you'll like the answer," Alex answered simply.

"On the contrary, I actually think it'll be rather flattering for me," He had corrupted that woman; had shaken her very core yet even though his expression was seemingly proud of his actions, deep down he couldn't help but wonder if his mere presence was enough to devour the light inside any noble spirit. Even though he didn't know anything about her and that he still suspected that the woman was hiding something from him, he had no choice but to accept that Alex was a good person – but with him around… he had already seen her taking a life and now she was helping him conduct the risky business of cleaning up his own mess. She was a doctor, after all, she was supposed to  _help_  people, not cover up their murders. Was he such a terrible influence on others? The only answer to that question was terrifying.

"When will you be back?" Alex asked him.

"Don't know. You know I got to go," Black said with fake disinterest.

"Yes but, things have changed," the woman added.

"Have they now?" the mercenary reflected, "seems to me we're right back where we started: just the two of us against those filthy rebel-seekers."

"People have died," Alex said rather nostalgically – the implications carried deep within the simplicity of the word  _people_  were certain and merciless for the mercenary. The woman moved closer and stood between Black and the door: "are you gonna tell me now what the hell is it that we're supposed to be doing in here? Or should I just wait for you to come knocking, bleeding to death, for me to patch you up again?"

The mercenary took a step forward and kissed her forehead tenderly, the thin fabric of his bandana was simply not enough to lessen the warm feeling of his lips trying to reach for her skin.

"I guess I better find every item on your list, then," he concluded humbly, as an inconspicuous half smile, safely concealed behind his purple bandana started to bright up his face. As the roaring thunder kept echoing through the cabin's old walls and shelves, the mercenary grabbed his deadly bounty and stepped into the nocturnal landscape of the mountains.


	15. Medusa

Arc II

Chapter XV

**Medusa**

* * *

  _"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you._

_This storm is you._

_Something **inside**  of you."_

Haruki Murakami — Kafka on the Shore

* * *

Getting rid of the attacker's mutilated head had been an easy task for the tired cowboy. He had simply thrown away the smaller package as soon as he had started to walk down the slope, before getting near the lower hillside: the rounded, smaller bounty was now eternally resting in the bottom of a pitch-dark, steep, godforsaken ravine where no one would ever find it. But now, sleep deprivation was slowly starting to take its toll on the traveling mercenary; his nomadic bones kept on marching as his jaded neurons were trying to push those darker thoughts aside.

Unable to sleep, the fragile state of mind he had to endure was ultimately obliging him to keep up a forced state of constant wakefulness. The monotonous inertia driving his body in a relentless march had become the only company for the tired cowboy still trying to elucidate the true intentions behind Alex's sudden concern – perhaps the woman was genuinely worried about him, he thought, especially now that Aalem was gone.

There were other things weighing heavily on his head; rather important things he knew he should be taking into consideration as well yet he was too tired to force his mind into a pointless debate to find out whether the doctor had been right or not – he couldn't afford to risk his alibi, he couldn't let that head become yet another inconvenience threatening to lead the Outworld authorities back to him. Even though he was positive he wasn't the only one in position to possess and fire such peculiar weapons, he knew a man like him would be considered a suspect in case a nosy official decided to dig deeper into the murder that the Outworld society was about to discover.

He  _was_  one of Outworld highest authorities after all – that much was true. Yet deep down the mercenary was certain that his bad reputation had always preceded him and so his infamously corrosive fame and the constant rounds of gossip going on about his mysterious past and his violent tendencies would certainly jeopardize his impunity. Besides his outspoken loyalty and the binding contract recruiting an improvised Outworlder in him; in their eyes, he was always going to be a filthy Earthrealmer.

Even though there would be no physical evidence leading back to him, the doubt persisted in the back of his twisted, tired mind. No crime goes unpunished, he knew, or at least that's what everybody seemed to think. He had proven otherwise though, time and time again – he knew that having the right contacts and bribing the right pockets were always viable options in case the whole thing would end up blowing up in his face. Yet the sole idea of having his name linked to that man's murder was enough to make him shiver.

Alexandra had been painfully accurate back then:

_“There are things you can't explain. Are you ready to explain everything that has happened since the day we met?"_

He wasn't.

He couldn't.

Her sudden and rather mystifying worry about his wellbeing was as unsettling as the dampen atmosphere carried by the humid winds of the incipient dawn, slowly impregnating his damaged skin with a warmth that felt too alien to actually make him feel anything at all. That thick layer of mist punctiliously made of unwelcomed dewdrops and his own dried sweat felt like an invisible trap cultivating the remaining parts of his weary senses and preventing his pores from breathing. Alexandra's motherly concern felt the exact same way for the lonesome mercenary: it was like having a heavy blanket over his neck to try and warm up his mistreated shoulders yet it was an undesired, foreign feeling for him. The heartwarming sensation of having someone actually taking care of him and worrying about his future was a forbidden luxury for the untamable cowboy.

Still, she _had_  worried. She had tried to protect him, to understand him, to accompany him through such an obscure moment of grief even when he had tried to kill her. He had doubted himself that night, and now the shadows of that weathered doubt were slowly beginning to cover the visible part of his face again: beyond all possible hesitation or falter, he was a marksman after all. No one in their right minds would ever doubt his skills, not even himself, but the obnoxious doubt existed nonetheless; its persistent nature was indeed suffocating for the bounty hunter. Just as a mythical chimera, its contaminating shadow would caress the depths of his turbulent mind like a whimsical fixation, eyeing him speculatively from a distant pedestal he wasn't meant to reach.

He had had his doubts about that night, ever since pulling the trigger.

She was asleep, after all, it seemed unlikely of him to miss a dormant target even though the woman had been turning and tossing in her sleep.

_Were you having a bad dream?_

Erron Black crossed his arms over his chest as he tried to shake himself out of that awkward feeling of not being completely familiarized with his own ungoverned thoughts. With the larger package resting patiently on the ground before his feet now, the mercenary leaned his back against one of the most isolated stalls of the Outworld Marketplace; allowing the dense shadows of the night to engage in a perpetual, intimate dance with the obscure shades projected by the blue awning above his head, secluding his nearly bicentennial face from the weak light coming from the streets.

Being back in Z'unkahrah had always been reassuring for the mercenary only this time the feeling was altogether different for him: that deserted space, the Marketplace, was about to become ground zero in a tacit war between the Kahn's enforcer and the drastic rebel-seekers. Irony was, once again, capriciously delimitating a dangerous terrain for all actors to play their roles – the simplistic geography of the matter was stating that even though both sides involved in the silent war were actually chasing after the same goal, that very goal had positively corrupted both sides – to simply hunt down the remaining Tarkatans in order to bring them to the Kahn seemed naïve now, to say the least. Black scratched his forehead as he contemplated the paradox in that forced situation: the civilians had crossed an unforgivable line, they had tried to add his name to the long list of recovered bounties that would pay for their dinners, they had tried to turn him into an objective prize; they had threatened Alex, they had murdered both Harry and Aalem – and for what? For money? Black shook his head in disbelief even though he knew the feeling all too well yet there were lines that were not meant to be crossed, he was certain of it. The darknet they had knitted all around him with vacuous intrigues and dirty tricks was just too dangerous for the mercenary to pretend that nothing was going on.

_I told you, they are everywhere._

As the obsidian night wrapped him up completely, Black allowed his tired mind to consider, even if only for a moment, the chance of letting the Kahn know about everything he had gone through ever since waking up in Alex's bed. But informing Kotal Kahn about their unexpected odyssey felt like giving in to an unethical, bittersweet betrayal and the mere thought of it suddenly seemed inconceivable, even for a corrupted man like him. What could happen to the doctor if he came clean to the emperor now? She had been unfairly accused of stealing food, a crime punishable by death in Outworld, yet the misleading man who had accused her was dead now and no one other than Black himself could testify in her favor. The woman had tended to his wounds, after all. She had cared about him, and she had tried her best to save Aalem.

Pitch black as the night itself, his sinister plan finally began to form into a fully constructed shape as a beggar made his way through the deserted marketplace. Black inspected the man from afar as the old Outworlder started to rummage through the leftovers discarded by the shop owners; his wrinkled fingers already swimming through the garbage while searching for some food. The sad image of that neglected indigent, with his long, loose sleeves already soaked in the liquid transpiration of meals that no one had wanted back then and no one should be eating by now, was enough for the pensive mercenary to realize that even though the dark reign of terror caused by Mileena's erratic rule was over, there was still a large portion of the Outworld population living in despair and struggling to survive and overcome their own poverty and squalor on a daily basis. Perhaps those very same concepts had been the ones motivating the rebel seekers, he thought. Yet, with his legs already marching once again, he smoothly evaded the sinister package resting on the ground by the deserted, remote stall and walked up to the beggar.

"Care for a few coins?" The cowboy asked with his baritone voice seemingly touching the limits of his own frivolity, and ultimately startling the old man in ragged clothes.

The beggar nodded almost mechanically as he offered Black a wide-eyed gaze: the Outworlder knew who he was dealing with, the fright in his eyes was revealing. The old man stood up and wiped his hungry mouth with the back of a hand partially hidden by his filthy sleeve – the rancid odor of garbage and dirt was enough for Black's face to contort in disgust. The leery Outworlder extended both his hands this time, forming a metaphorical vault with his fingers intertwined as if expecting Black to just give him money, perhaps even in an altruistic fashion, to help him mitigate the nature of his social predicament. Yet the mercenary shook his head darkly as he finally began to explain himself:

"I don't do charity," he informed the old man rather sarcastically, "you'll have to do something for me in return."

"What… what would you like me to do?" The beggar asked suspiciously as he lowered his helpless hands.

"See that package over there?" Black indicated as he signaled the poor man to direct his sight to the obscure object resting by the shadows engulfing the periphery of the outdoor venue where they both were standing. "I need you to take it to the center of the Marketplace, and leave it there."

The beggar smiled. A contagious, exultant grin suddenly started to infectiously contort every single muscle in his weather-beaten face. A simple task was about to buy him a proper dinner. He turned around and took a long step forward when Black, already anticipating the Outworlder's unmasked anxiety, outstretched his arm and grabbed him by the shoulder. The man turned around once more, still held prisoner by the mercenary's arm hovering mid-air and creating a tacit barrier between the two of them. The beggar gave him a puzzled look but Black didn't care in the slightest, he buried his fingers in the beggar's forearm and stopped the man before he could get any further.

"Once you get there, open the package – leave the contents there but bring me back the sheet that's covering them. I'll be waiting over here," he indicated as he finally let go of the man and, still sheltered by the shadowy night, leaned his back against the nearest wall.

The beggar made his way to the stall where Black had been hiding and took the gruesome package with careful hands. It was clearly heavier than he had expected so the old, battered Outworlder ended up dragging the dreadful bounty across the place until he reached the center spot. He looked over his shoulder and searched for Black's approval and the mercenary nodded in silence as he watched the beggar's every move. The miserable man untied the knot that had created a package out of the large piece of cloth and finally pulled the sheet – a decapitated body, already swollen and rather greenish, began to slip through his exalted fingers. The greasiness of that already rotting skin, combined with the blood and the dirt contaminating that abominable cadaver were creating an odor far worse than the one he had smelled while rummaging through the garbage.

The horrified beggar took a step backward almost instinctively and covered his mouth with his hands, completely shaken by the image he had been forced to witness. He took the sheet from under the mutilated body as quickly as possible and ran towards Black.

"You never mentioned I would be carrying a dead body!" the affected beggar yelled at him, his hands were shaking nervously as if finally realizing that every single thing he had heard about the man now standing patiently in front of him was true.

Black placed his hands on his hips and took a good look at the macabre scene that was about to surely cause a fuss among the shoppers and countless civilians in just a few hours. He nodded, satisfied: Pareedis' decapitated body was now leaning against one of the most popular stalls. Those swollen, greenish hands were carelessly resting at the sides of the attacker's torso, the little curvature of each lifeless muscle caused by the man's irrevocable inanimate nature was forcing the neck and the collarbones to hang like a black sail tempering the oceans, about to cruise its sinister way through the last hours of darkness. Black smiled helplessly, although the gesture was safely concealed behind his bandana – those rebel seekers and their infamous cause… they were surely about to get his message this time.

The indigent stretched one of his hands again - this time, to demand what was now rightfully his. Those coins that the Earthrealmer mercenary had promised. The old Outworlder had delivered, now it was time for Black to honor his own, belligerent word.

"Where are my manners?" Black said darkly as he approached the beggar, his menacing shadow towering over the old man. He searched his pockets for a handful of coins and showed them to the poor man, the imminent treasure exhibited before those hungry eyes was the epitome of temptation for the Outworlder in need – the filthy beggar's eyes popped open all of a sudden; the ambitious gaze of precious silver and nearly lustful copper shinning astonishingly in front of him was enough to make the man forget all about morality.

"The sheet," Black commanded suddenly, causing the beggar to hand the dirty piece of cloth almost immediately. The Outworlder outstretched his hand yet it stayed there, hovering in front of the cowboy. The beggar's dirty fingers had trapped the cloth inside their grip, his foul digits were holding on the sheet as if the fabric had become some rhetorical leverage for the beggar to wager. Static and absorbed, the Outworlder exhibited the sheet before Black's demanding eyes, still unable to let go.

"The coins," the beggar claimed, rather insulted by Black's tricks and games.

"You  _do_  know who I am, right?" Black questioned as he put the desired coins, the object of the beggar's attraction, back inside his pocket.

"Give me my money, you revolting Earthrealmer," the disgust in that man's voice was unfathomable now yet it only caused the Kahn's enforcer to cock his head despondently and raise an eyebrow.

Without much effort, Black killed the short distance separating him from the Outworlder and snatched the sheet from the beggar's hands. With one smooth push from his left forearm, the mercenary turned the man around and placed the dirty cloth around the old beggar's neck to fully immobilize the filthy vagrant now contorting his limbs in complete and utter desperation, and shaking helplessly against the stronghold of Black's body. The beggar tried to free himself from the strangling bond that Black had wrapped around his slender neck but the cowboy's strong hands, pulling mercilessly at the other end of the sheet, were certainly threatening to end the poor man's life.

As the Outworlder shook violently under Black's grasp, the mercenary pressed the sheet harder around his neck, asphyxiating the victim – rather sooner than later, the improvised trap that Black had manufactured by using the deadly envelope that had covered Pareedis' mutilated body, had become overbearing for the helpless old man already tasting the true nature of his own ungoverned greed.

In a matter of seconds, the struggle was over and the spasmodic, futile attempts of the man that had been subjugated by the cowboy's unrestrained violence finally gave in and met their end as the last receding seizures that still waved all across that dominated body began to disappear as well. Noticing the sudden stillness that was gradually taking over a body that was no longer fighting, Black finally let go from the beggar's neck and kneeled down: like a frightening boogeyman, the dark and troubled mercenary put the unconscious Outworlder's body inside the improvised bag he had made with the very same sheet he had used to suffocate the beggar and slowly made his way to the Kove, his marching feet preceded the gruesome package he was carrying as his one good hand kept dragging the man inside the sheet all the way to the gloomy harbor. The odor coming from the bay was nauseating, and the restless waves crashing all around him were slowly impregnating the pestilence in his clothes. The mercenary exhaled, his task almost completed, as the obsidian night accompanied his every move.

A tired yet satisfied Black stood on the edge of the crunching wooden boards. He cocked his head in disbelief as his eyes began to witness some minuscule, almost imperceptible movements coming from inside the sheet. Not exactly fond of surprises, the mercenary reached his back holders and grabbed one of his pistols.

He fired at the package with indifferent precision until the gruesome stains of blood he was expecting to see slowly started to contaminate the already filthy sheet containing the involuntary victim. Now that every possible reaction had been extinguished, Black kneeled down and held the package, tight hands wrapped around one end of the cloth. When he stood up again, he threw the bag into the tempested waters and left that dreadful place. The morning lights of the incandescent dawn about to bathe the city in bright yellow and intense orange were also about to become the mercenary's sullen scriveners; sending his message of retribution and fear throughout Z'unkahrah.

He had tried to murder her.

But he wouldn't betray her.

Yet, with his actions, he had made her now part of a dangerous battle that could potentially escalate and overcome the limits of his own imagination, only to reach the frightening gates of a menacing civil war.

* * *

By the time he finally got to the palace, the initial rituals of dawn had already begun to shine its light above the Z'unkahrah rooftops, bathing the sleepy citadel in an amber aura or golden and auburn. The whitened smoke, already coming out of the many chimneys of the palace and carelessly circling around the clouds above his head were carrying the first waves of a familiar smell: with breakfast already being baked, it wouldn't be long until every soul in the palace would begin marching up and down each corridor. As Black approached the guards standing solemnly at the sides of the first gate, he raised his tired eyes to find Torr standing alone by the staircase, quietly contemplating the unfamiliar tranquility taking place all around him. As he made his way upstairs, the mercenary nodded lightly, acknowledging Torr's presence. The cowboy even allowed himself a brief moment of genuine interaction as he patted the beast's shoulder gently before walking past him.

He was so tired he wasn't even able to walk anymore yet being so close to home was the final incentive he had been searching for – each stiff muscle in his legs was helping the man complete the laborious mechanism required to keep marching forwards no matter what, even though his numb legs were barely dragging his feet along each deserted corridor: by the time he found himself right in front of his bedchamber door the exhausted cowboy exhaled, finally at ease, and closed his eyes in delightful anticipation. His body needed to rest just like his lungs needed oxygen in order to function; the elusive slumber he had been seeking was finally about to envelop his troubled, damage body and it was surely about to wrap him up completely in the peaceful blanket of nearly unconscious dreams.

He finally stepped inside his own room only to find a messy bed being used by someone else. A small body; comfortably rolled up between the sheets and the deliciously soft cover was producing the infectious snoring he had been hearing ever since approaching his own bedchamber – raising one of his eyebrows in disbelief, the mercenary walked up to his bed and shook the trespasser's tiny body not really caring about fostering a peaceful awakening for the unwelcomed, invasive guest:

"Come on now, we talked about this," he managed to say as his persuasive hands insisted on shaking the sleepy warrior holding on to the sheets now as if holding on for dear life.

Ferra yawned naively, still wrapped up in Black's sheets, until her eyes swam into focus – she cursed something inaudible under her breath and spat some venomous remarks that fell beyond the mercenary's rather simplistic sense of mundane comprehension as she got up, finally, and started to walk towards the door.

The mercenary gazed upon her with patronizing eyes:

"You can't use my bed every time I don't sleep in my room," he preached with both of his hands at the sides of his waist. No matter how upset he was, the tiny warrior clearly seemed to pay no mind. "Ferra…" Black demanded quite paternally, causing her to stop on her tracks only to get closer to the wooden table in the center of the room. The child-like warrior searched through her clothes until she finally found the souvenir she was trying to sneak out of his bedroom.

"Leave it on the table," Black commanded patiently, already too familiarized with her poorly disguised intentions.

Groaning, and still cursing the mercenary for his unexpected intromission, her little hand finally let go of the sand grenade she had tried to conceal among her clothes, placing it upon the table among Black's deadliest treasures. She stared at the cowboy rather defiantly then walked towards the door again.

"Ferra," Black called out her name once more, nearly helpless, knowing his fellow enforcer a little too well by now to pretend she wasn't trying to steal anything else from his armory, "the caltrops too, Ferra,"

Seething and rolling her eyes, Ferra reached inside her pocket for a small leather package: a handful of caltrops fell on the table almost immediately as the small warrior untied the little piece of rope secluding the items inside the brown envelope for her own safety. The clicking sound of metal against metal barely caressed his tired ears.

Ferra bowed sheepishly, even if only to acknowledge that her plans had been ruined by his apparition, then walked towards the door.

"Ferra," Black called out her name one last time while carelessly throwing his cowboy hat on the bed, "the gun,"

"Bang-bang no fun,  _motherfucker_ ," Ferra let out, visibly annoyed, as she finally placed one of Black's revolvers on the table. Now that her desired bounty had been completely dismantled by its righteous owner, the petite warrior was finally channeling her bottled-up ire, visibly aiming for the proper target.

"Where did you learn that word?" Black questioned her as he observed the tiny enforcer getting lost behind his bedroom's room. He shook his head rather pensively – of all the people surrounding the symbiotic pairing, he knew he was the only one fully capable of professing such language for Ferra to imitate it.

"Oh, so mature… midget," the jaded cowboy spat under his breath as he took off his dirty bandana. He moved nearer the bed and closed the blinds, finally ready to embrace slumber, even if only briefly now that the city was about to panic and succumb to chaos - the mutilated body he had left at the Marketplace for the citizens to find was surely waiting for everyone interested in such a morbid sighting. Its unmistakable message of revenge and retribution was about to be heard like a roaring thunder transversally cruising its way throughout the city, implicating anyone and everyone in its delirious way.

He was sitting on the bed, his hands already about to take off his boots, when the insistent knocking on his bedchamber door startled him.

_What now?_

He walked up to the door creating a tight fist, testing the damaged muscles and tendons in his wounded hand – his palm curled up in excruciating pain only to be flexed again, allowing the first drops of blood to stain the white cloth dressing the laceration. He opened the door and leaned his tired body against the doorframe.

"Good morning, Mr. Black," an officer greeted him from behind the classic skull mask covering the man's face, "the Kahn is waiting for you, allow me to escort you to the Throne Room,"

The mercenary rolled his eyes and breathed out rather loudly, "no rest for the wicked..." Black's helpless statement was perpetrating the uncomfortable innuendo taking place inside his head. Discouraged, as he understood there wouldn't be any sleep for his tired system to regain its drained energy, the cowboy nodded and closed the door of his bedchamber as he went out.

Both Black and the Osh-Tekk guard walked in silence through the many corridors and stairs of the still-sleepy palace. Only a small amount of servants and maids were the only ones marching down the countless passageways in the intricate maze that was the inside of the palace – their legs kept moving relentlessly, all of them were headed in different directions, all carrying pillows and basins filled with water. The delicious smell coming from the kitchen was slowly taking over the mercenary's nostrils: bread and pastries for the early birds were no longer in the making, breakfast was an imminent reality now: the new day was already pushing its way towards him and towards everyone in Z'unkahrah; there wouldn't be any time for him to sleep – the maelstrom of duty that all enforcers had to endure each day would wait for no one.

The Osh-Tekk guard signaled Black to step inside the Throne Room with a polite vow. There he was, already grinning in his direction, the Kahn himself.

"Erron," the emperor began, "are you just getting in?"

Black nodded quietly, rather ashamed of his own assertion - he knew the Kahn wouldn't be particularly thrilled to find out that he had been traveling the whole night instead of sleeping in his bed, like he should have, resting his body to bravely face a brand new day.

Ever since mastering the despotic charade he had played on nearly everyone around him, making them believe that he had miraculously escaped and recovered from the attack of a bunch of wild Tarkatans, the Kahn had been quite permissive towards his mysterious demands and rather capricious requests: he needed some time alone; he had adduced. Some  _quality time_  for him to rediscover the true warrior still dwelling within him – some  _quality time_  for Black to bring that warrior out of the turbulent shadows enveloping him and back into the glorious, diaphanous light.

Worried about the mercenary's wounded pride _and_  body, the legendary Osh-Tekk had benevolently agreed upon letting him go every now and then. He had allowed Black to get a few days off for the Earthrealm cowboy to recover his strength, to envision and embrace again that path of loyal service as well as master his own tarnished capabilities. He had been there for Kotal ever since the beginning – the Kahn could see he was slowly but surely regaining that trademark poise that had caught his eye back then. Now, Black's fellow enforcers were judging the emperor, thinking that Kotal had become too soft towards the infamous Earthrealmer. Perhaps it was time for everyone and everything to go back to normal, Kotal considered once again as he crossed his arms over his chest yet besides understanding Black's emotional and physical turmoil after his miraculous return, it was true that the emperor was known for his severe opinion regarding the responsibilities of his personal enforcers. He had indeed empowered them all yet there were responsibilities and obligations for the selected group of warriors he had chosen to protect the Outworld throne. They were supposed to eat as healthily as possible and sleep an acceptable amount of hours – these basic demands were pillars of their mutual trust and allowed their solid commitment to flow smoothly from the emperor to his enforcers and vice versa – no consideration, no negotiation was justified then when it came to such basic demands.

The Khan shook his head pensively as he beckoned the tall woman standing by the window, "Erron," Kotal Kahn said once the woman had joined them, "meet Zarrabayeusse, your new lackey."

The look on the mercenary's face was giving him away: he hadn't expected Kotal to hire a new lackey for him and he certainly hadn't expected to see Zarrabayeusse ever again. Visibly overwhelmed, Black opened his mouth to protest but the emperor lifted his right hand, demanding silence from the cowboy.

"I know it might seem weird of me to hire a female lackey for one of my closest enforcers but the woman seems appropriate enough for the job," Kotal began, quite solemnly. "On the other hand, she's part of Dexitis' family so I have reason to believe you two are already acquainted. I am almost certain there won't be any problems between the two of you," the emperor said with a sarcastic smile curling up his lips. "Your familiarity shall make things easier for you, I am sure - Dexitis was a marvelous employee; he served you well for many years, Erron. When he died, you suggested his son Aalem was the right one for the job – I had my doubts back then, given the boy's young age, but you insisted on giving him the opportunity and despite my early predictions about his performance, the infant proved himself worthy," the emperor placed one of his hands on the mercenary's shoulder, "but when you told me you were afraid that growing up inside the secluding walls of this palace wasn't going to be good for him, I accepted your fears and I embraced them as my own. You've been on your own ever since, and that's something I've been meaning to correct for a long time now," Kotal concluded, clapping his hands twice to indicate the woman that she was no longer needed.

As soon as the woman had left the room, leaving the two men alone again, Kotal Kahn crossed his arms over his chest and the timid grin that had been curling up his lips only moments ago turned into a definitive, straight line. Finding nothing but silence in Black, the Kahn rolled his eyes and breathed out finally realizing that talking some sense into the troubled Earthrealmer standing motionless in front of him was completely up to him.

The emperor patted the cowboy's shoulder gently as if looking for some tacit comradeship to help him mitigate the sourness encysted in the harsh words he was about to pronounce:

"I know it may be easy for you to think that, as the emperor of Outworld, I'm way too absorbed in my own priorities – there're always some impendent, pressing matters and complicated politics I need to pay attention to, I know," the Kahn said, "these things tend to detach us from the simplest of things, they seem to divert us from the little things around us and, perhaps, all that pretentious bureaucracy is what clouds your judgment and fools your mind into thinking that the most mundane of frivolities and daily trifles cannot reach my ears," Kotal explained in a low tone, leaning in closer even though they were the only ones left in the enormous, intimidating Throne Room.

Black nodded quietly, not really sure if his voice would be welcomed.

"But I'll have you know: some things  _do_  reach my ears every now and then, Erron. I know you have a certain…  _reputation_. I shall not hide it behind poetic euphemisms: the word 'misogynous' has been heard a lot around this place – most of the times, it was you the one they were talking about. I'm also rather familiarized with your…  _personal records_ , should we name it like that," the emperor continued as he sat back down on the throne, "countless maids have already complained about you and your…  _peculiar_  ways and… your rather  _conservative_  sayings towards women," the Kahn took a deep breath, relaxing the muscles of his suddenly aggravated expression, "I know losing Dexitis was a big shock for you. And I know that when we let Aalem go you said you didn't want another lackey – but you need one, just like the rest of my enforcers. This woman I just hired for you seems to be the right person for the job: she already knows you, she shares part of your history and I honestly believe she can help you during this difficult time."

 _This difficult time_ …

"When you came back home after spending those horrendous weeks in captivity I told you, as your employer, that I understood and I  _still_  understand what you're going through and so I shall do everything in my power help you," the Kahn paused, as he looked right into Black's eyes: "this is me; then, helping you."

The Osh-Tekk crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Black already reaching for the door.

"One last thing," the emperor's deep, stern voice was enough to make the mercenary stop right where he was. The cowboy turned around, still enveloped in the most cryptic of silences, and looked at his employer.

"In case you and this woman should ever fight, or have an argument, or if you decide to be  _you_  again -  _I don't want to hear a word about it_. I don't want her yelling to reach my ears, Black. So I warn you – should you find yourself fighting against this woman, no matter if physically or merely verbally, keep it behind closed doors." The Kahn added before dismissing the cowboy.

Black's feet had already resumed their hurried march when the Kahn's sarcastic tone caressed the cowboy's troubled ears one more time:

"Your hand, by the way, another hunting accident, I presume? Maybe you should consider the possibility of engaging in a different activity - a  _safer_  one, perhaps."

Black nodded in silence with his lips pressed tightly, the dried insides of his mouth were already savoring the bittersweet aftertaste behind the Kahn's words. Just as he was about to finally leave the Throne Room, two Osh-Tekk guards burst into the room, visibly agitated and alarmed.

"Emperor, a decapitated body has been found in the marketplace," one of them informed.

A preoccupied Kotal Kahn stood up almost immediately and walked up to his private balcony: the sight was truly heartbreaking. Hundreds of civilians were covering their mouths in complete horror; women, men, and children were desperately trying to catch a glimpse of the morbid scene.

"Retrieve the body," the emperor ordered as the rest of his enforcers made their way to the Kahn's balcony: Reptile, Ermac and the symbiotic pairing surrounded Kotal Kahn in a semi-circle completed by Black himself. "Guess you'll be patrolling the Marketplace for the rest of the day. Prepare yourselves." The Osh-Tekk demanded.

As the enforcers left the Throne Room, a straggler Black heard the last interaction between the emperor and the two guards that had previously interrupted their nearly-extinguished conversation.

"Any leads on any possible suspects?" The Kahn asked.

"No."

* * *

When he opened the door of his bedchamber the only thing on his mind was to pour himself a good glass of liquor to help him through the day. There wouldn't be enough time for bathing or even changing his clothes but the alcohol seemed now completely necessary for the exhausted cowboy in order to keep his fatigued system as attentive and alert as possible throughout the complicated hours of confusion and chaos about to dominate the workday waiting ahead of him.

Black walked up to the wooden table in the center of his room and picked up a solitary glass resting among multiple boxes of ammunition. The treasures that Ferra had tried to steal from him only moments ago were still there, scattered among his belongings.

"How long has it been, Erron?"

The unexpected female voice startled him – Zarrabayeusse was sitting on his bed, her legs crossed in sheer despondency. The light coming from the shutters was creating delicate clouds of auburn luminescence all around the maroon pashmina wrapped around her head. Jet black was floating carelessly around her olive-skinned visage in the seemingly ethereal form of a few loose hairs that had escaped from their imprisonment.

"Since what exactly? Since we met or since we last saw each other?" the mercenary asked patiently as he turned to his side to look her in the eye. Those emerald eyes of hers were powerful magnets, forcing him to stare indefinitely into their quiet depths.

"Since you ruined my sister's life by killing her husband," Zarrabayeusse stated with remarkable simplicity and indifference. The woman stood up, causing the cascading, silky maroon dress that she was wearing to kiss the ground. The sleeveless, long dress was concealing a body he knew like the back of his wounded hand.

"Your sister was already dead," the cowboy challenged her.

"Was she now?" the woman said as she slowly surrounded the Earthrealmer with an enticing cadence.

"Thirty-five years, Zar. It's been thirty-five years," Black confessed, finally looking away but only momentarily.

"You're supposed to sleep at night, Earthrealmer," Zarrabayeusse teased him as soon as she noticed the tired gaze reaching for her once again. She took a small chamber pot and filled it with water - then, using a handkerchief, she embedded the tip of the cloth in the crystal clear liquid and carefully began to remove the dry kohl around Black's eyes. With gentle strokes coming from her experienced fingertips, the woman massaged the dark orbs circling the tired man's eyes. "What's going on?" she asked, "another deal went wrong? Another worthless bounty? Or was it another assignment in the jungle? You hate that jungle, or better saying, like  _you_  yourself would say it: you _fucking hate that damned, green jungle_. What's wrong,  _man of the desert_? Is your boss troubling you? Or is it more personal?" Zarrabayeusse went on, finally leaving the dirty handkerchief on the table.

"Quit it," Black warned her.

"Another infuriated, angry husband maybe?" she moved closer to the cowboy again, this time, to re-apply the kohl that would hide his lack of slumber. No matter how soothing those fingers were, they still felt like sharp blades cutting through his skin. The mercenary fidgeted impatiently, trying to get away from her touch, but his useless attempts only made her grip tighter as she buried her fingers around his cheeks.

"But you've come a long way now, haven't you  _cowboy_? You've changed, you're one of the Kahn's favorite enforcers," Zarrabayeusse's sarcastic remarks seemed endless for his tired ears. "Do they actually get mad at you now – the husbands, that is? You could literally walk inside any house and  _bang_  any woman and what could the husband do about it?" the irony encysted in her tone was a headache in itself. "You're empowered now; aren't you? You're  _untouchable_." Rancor was just another participant in the festival of mixed feelings that the woman was projecting through her words.

"What do you want, Zar?" he cupped her hand with his - this time, he was the one restricting her moves.

"For a long time, I woke up every morning saying the same thing over and over until the very statement lost all meaning to me:  _I want to put his filthy head on a spike and watch as the crows feast on his eyes_. I warned them:  _he's a bird of prey_ ," Zarrabayeusse remembered as the shadows of an ancient sadness set on her face, "but they never listened."

The loud noises coming from the outside startled them both and they rushed their way to Black's balcony to see what was going on: the uproar in the Marketplace was getting out of hand.

Leaving the dazed woman behind, the mercenary went back inside his bedchamber and grabbed a brown, leather face mask from one of his drawers. He slammed the door on his way out and ran to meet the rest of the enforcers that were already trying to dominate the rather commotional crowd attempting to invade the Marketplace.

"Tell me, Ferra, have you ever been to the zoo?" Black asked the tiny warrior about to climb all the way up to her companion's shoulder – Ferra shook her head, helpless: "Well this is your lucky day, then."

All of them, like species of a same, revolted breed, had gathered before his eyes: the curious, anonymous bystanders, trying to catch a glimpse of the morbid scene. The petulant shop owners, complaining about not being able to sell their goods for the day. The whining shoppers, waiting for the Marketplace to let them in in order to buy the day's lunch and dinner and completely oblivious to the fact that the place had now turned into a crime scene, their selfish minds only paying attention to their own pressing matters. The usual unruly ones, trying to cause chaos in an already chaotic environment. The usual ones in desperate need of attention, already making ridiculous claims such as being  _close friends_  with the victim even when no-one had identified the decapitated body yet.

The enforcers stayed in their surveillance spots all across the perimeter, trying to cover more ground and forming a barricade alongside the Osh-Tekk guards that Kotal Kahn had assigned for the unexpected task. Only after the mutilated body had been recovered from the now-confiscated stall, Reptile took a step forward and talked to the crowd:

"The place needs to be cleaned now, you must head home. There's nothing to be seen in here," the Zaterran ordered.

While the voices of hundreds of plebeians protested in unison, every enforcer and guard took several steps forward trying to intimidate the crowd. As the day progressed and the hours piled up heavily on their tired shoulders, the mass finally receded. Black stayed in the center of the Marketplace, though, with the rest of the enforcers. Even though the place had been closed down for the day, they still remained there, patrolling the area.

When the first auburn lights of the sunset were bathing the rooftops in orange and amber, the mercenary felt a pinch trying to wake up his numb leg: a small infant, less than five years old, was staring right into his eyes.

"Get movin', kid," Black ordered, rather unfriendly.

The small boy smiled in return and handed him a piece of paper before running away.

It was a drawing - a small child's drawing.

The mercenary's coffee-colored eyes got clouded by an unfathomable sense of terror and his breath stopped dead in his mouth - the little boy's doodles were revealing more than he could handle: under a black sky, filled with irregular, uneven stars and two big moons, a little house in the mountains was engulfed in flames.


	16. La Indómita Luz

Arc II

Chapter XVI

 **La Indómita Luz se Hizo Carne en Mí**

* * *

  _"Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star._

_It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago._

_Maybe the star doesn't even exist anymore. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything."_

Haruki Murakami — South of the Border, West of the Sun

* * *

They surround him like a million broken parachutes. Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket.

The immensity of the mountains at night, and their capricious trails and paths leading to a lost Eden seem to reach out for him somehow. They stretch their ethereal fingertips to touch the void that's guiding his steps, their desperate efforts are willing to envelop his whole body and, finally, touch the edges of his torn melancholy.

Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket. As they swirl away their combusted animas they dress in crimson and gold. They rise as they burn; they melt savagely into the thin air. They disappear, as they find each other lost in a celestial ignition, they tell stories about everything that is no more.

As he walks, he follows their silent calling with eyes that have seen it all. He dares to touch them; the fire of a flame that burns no more: those dancing ghosts made of fragments of his own afire existence, they have now become the ashes of his long-lost paradise.

Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket – they fly around in a perpetual dance of fire and decay; he's already been here before.

The feeling; roaring inside his chest. He knows it all too well. _Déjà vu._

The parallelism, too vivid, imprints the marks of his own past on his skin. His eternally wounded skin; secluding the nomad trapped inside that vessel made of flesh and bone. The man marches, alone, as his clumsy feet stumble upon the rocks and stones – mere decoys in a path of desperation, he knows.

He smells the smoke; the disengaging odor of everything that's ending, he knows. He knows the fire – knows all fires and yet, knows no fire.

" _When we heard your entire battalion had been erased in that fire, we thought we wouldn't see you again."_

" _What fire?"_

His trembling knees are about to succumb, the cold air whistling around him is gradually lacerating his skin with the might of a god – the wrath of a god, the sin of his abandonment. He should have stayed.

He should have stayed.

" _Those northern bastards started a fire that killed everyone in that zone and destroyed every building."_

The liquor store is no more. And the cabin is no more. In the shape of burnt wood and twisted metal more ghosts will rise to haunt him, there will be new bones waiting in the torturous hours of his sleep, new regrets shall come to punish him during his lonesome, troubling nights.

_The only things that were waiting for him were the ashes of the place that had sheltered them before and her dead body, buried between the still-burning foundations and the collapsing infrastructure. He got on his knees and cried, absorbed and powerless, completely alone for the very first time._

Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket. They kiss under the starless sky only to die a peaceful agony.

The cabin, that place he had built himself, was his true home. It was the first place he had been able to call his own in Outworld ever since embracing his own eternity. Ever since the saloon. Ever since the portal. But now the cabin is no more and as he crumbles down his knees kiss the dirt. It's the heated ground beneath his feet what's calling him - the warrior, the gun for hire, the peacemaker, the man who lost his own soul – twice.

He breaks down and cries, like a vulnerable child, as his eyes embrace the decadent sight: the cabin is no more. Parts of the floor and the roof have been merged now; their structures have been entangled in a blazing fire and the flames roar like a fiery mouth, its lascivious tongue, mercilessly licking the emptiness of a sky corrupted by a million incandescent fireflies. The mercenary gets up and finally approaches the scene of his own decadence.

Witnessing the dancing flames from afar won't do.

As he steps inside the ruins of his hours, his face mask is no longer enough: he covers his face with his forearm – the smoke, he knows, that intoxicating whirlpool of grey and black; it's despotically taunting him. It calls out their names. It whispers mad tales about his countless twisted sins. As he gets closer to what used to be the main room, the iridescent souvenirs of war gather to offer him a warm welcome. Déjà vu. His hands feel the fire; he knows all fires though he knows no fire.

Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket.

Little flames, like tiny daring acrobats, slither wildly before him. They dance away their delirium in front of his calloused hands. Their reflection, the mirrored pace of their ritual, finds its root in the hollowness of his coffee-colored eyes. The crunching floor beneath his feet is no longer a foundation for his hopes to evolve - that cabin was home, it was shelter, it was sanctuary.

Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket. The cabin and the liquor store have kissed it all away.

The crunching, dying floorboards are revealing the unconsecrated treasures he shall collect, patiently, as he ventures his tired bones deeper into the flames. The table and the shelves, completely charred by now, are covered by the ashes of a revenge that stains his troublesome spirit. Aalem's notes, fragmented into a million pieces and barely recognizable, are now floating around in the amber-colored air. Alex's shoes are now dancing in their peaceful lethargy – their motionless rhythm embraces him in a way he cannot remember until he remembers. He remembers those very same incandescent fireflies soaring to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket, lifting Annie and his unborn child, carrying them in their suffocating wings.

As he stands up the last wall falls apart, only a few boards remain standing still like a ruined skeleton summoning the kindred spirit waiting on the other side. He walks towards the apparition, mesmerized by a presence so vivid it screams his name, in the vestiges of what used to be his room – the bed, untouched, is threatened by the flames dancing down the curtains. Outside and all around, incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket but time has once again stopped for the lonely man now reaching for those frightened, distant pupils hiding by the wardrobe – he reaches out for her as his eyes try to find a safe passage to get them through the abyss of relentless flames.

As she takes his hand, he remembers – those very same incandescent fireflies soaring to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket, lifting Annie and his unborn child, carrying them in their suffocating wings. But not tonight. She is there, the blue of her eyes is emanating like a tidal wave that envelops his fragile shape and this shaken silhouette consumes him as she stands up and walks with him towards this embroidered light – his eyes, fatigued and enraptured by the desired vision of life, cannot look away from that face engulfed in sadness and confusion.

Suddenly he sees the seed of his own vengeance, sees the world on fire.

She's barefoot; the auburn of her hair mimics the entangled cobwebs of his own, nearly bicentennial reflection. They walk through the fire, as the dancing flames create a rhythm of their own; she breathes, she exhales, she's alive and so, the mercenary melts in the heat of a bonfire so old it corrupts his instincts.

Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket.

Safe and sound, the man grabs her by the shoulders with an urgent need that feels alien for the eternal mercenary – he gazes at her, as his fingers run to touch the loose auburn hairs flying carelessly before him. The sight, so cruel and enrapturing, reverberates the echoes of a truth that blinds him - suddenly he sees her for what she truly is: a suppressed Shangri La of devoted loves that are his no more, a painful reconstruction of the man he used to be, but is no more because _they_  are no more. The truth, unbearable and intoxicating, presents itself like an unwanted epiphany forcing him to open his eyes.

She looks exactly like Amanda, but she is not Amanda – She's a healer, just like Annie, but she's not Annie. She's desire, like those torturous cravings once awakened by Jessica's tantalizing ways. But she's not Jessica.

" _If you were me, what would you do?"_

The kid had asked back then, in all his innocence.

" _I'd watch her pass by."_

He should have watched her pass by.

Suddenly he understands, he acknowledges his own shortcomings: ever since meeting that woman he had known, deep inside, that he was not supposed to revolve around her. Yet he had tried almost anything to keep her by his side: he had tried to seduce her, to romance her, to protect her, to seclude her inside his little crystal box.

He had tried to murder her.

Because he knew, he had known all along, that having her near was like subjugating his body to a dreadful magnet corrupting his very own essence.

But now, as his eyes swim inside the blue reflecting his puzzled expression, now he knows there is no other way. He has to do the one thing that he should have done right from the start: he has to watch her pass by. His feet are pinned to the ground – he's certain now; he's about to leave her. Yet the tenderness of her gesture damages his senses, it blinds him, it numbs him. She embraces herself; the thin and dirty cache coeur she's wearing is hiding something else and the mercenary focuses his vision until he finds it. There it is, safe and protected against her chest, she holds the treasure with unprecedented love; the cradle of her arms is protecting it.

She looks like a mother. But she's not his mother.

He approaches her. A halo of confusion clouds his eyes as he moves closer – "How?" he mumbles, his avid arms already traveling the distance separating them.

"The wardrobe," she explains. The dirt left by the fire impregnates her skin. The sin of such a pristine image polluted by mundanity itself is enough to make him tremble. Dark ash covers her shoulders, her blue eyes are like beacons in the dark as they summon the little hope that's left in him. Her messy hair is a cascade of auburn – her skin, polluted after the fire and the smoke. He strokes her cheek as he nods in silent desperation. She has never looked so pale.

Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket – the immensity of the mountains at night and their capricious trails and paths leading to a lost Eden seem to reach out somehow, to touch the edges of his melancholy. Alex removes her arms for her stomach as she lets go of her own embrace. The cradle she had been holding, his eyes cannot believe it, she's saved it. His box.

"I thought this was worth saving," she says, as she tucks her hair behind her ears.

His hand strokes the treasure, his fingers, sliding, the feeling is balsamic: she's none of those women yet she has saved them all. She has rocked them all tenderly, in the blissful cradle of her own arms for him to still have them, someway – for him to still be defined by them. For him to be, intrinsically, the man that he is. The man he has always been.

"Just take me home," she pleads; her weak voice about to break.

With his heart in his mouth, those faces resurface to torment his fragility.

" _I'd watch her pass by."_

"No," the mercenary whispers as he shakes his head, the thought is too blinding to comply, the feeling is killing his instincts - "that's not who I am, I am not that man."

The hero.

Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket. Their intricate ballet of orange and yellow fades helplessly in the whistling wind. Their mesmerizing magnificence, though nearly extinguished, is making them stand on the verge of an abyss – an imminent, enrapturing leap of faith, already embracing the darkness to come. As they vanish all around them, their agonizing existence begins to shimmer in the hourglass of their goodbye.

The woman looks at him with such tenderness it fractures his skin, for they are as they'll always be: scared.

"I've been having a hard time trying to wrap my head around this. This is where I get off. This is where I let you go. This is where we stop corrupting each other," he says, visibly moved and overwhelmed, his eyes are already gravitating towards a horizon where she is no more. Her shape, in the vision of his mind, is fumbling towards a void so dark, so menacingly final that it devours her; it consumes her: she's casting shadows now, as she approaches the vacuum of his soul. _One more step, my dear,_ _and you'll be buried inside my spirit._

The speechless woman reaches out for him but he evades her touch.

He waits, though, as she offers him the box and he finally takes it as he tastes his own past merging with his present. _One more step, my dear,_ _and you'll be buried inside my spirit._ He lowers his head as his eyes keep gravitating towards a horizon where she is no more. Only she still  _is_ and she has become, one more time, the embodiment for his every tribulation. His blind prayers – oh, he knows; the black prison of his spirit could never hold her, it could never contain her, possess her, fragment her into a million pieces only to recreate her later.

His eyes find her again; the supernova exploding all around them is making those fireflies dance a final ballet. The mercenary unclasps his mask only to clasp it back on – her. The leather straps, as he fastens them around her skull, will try to keep her safe through the fire.

_One more step, my dear…_

He takes off his poncho and places it over her shoulders, wrapping her up in his own incandescence. This is goodbye; they both know. Her hands rest on his chest now, the initial teardrops begin cascading down her cheeks. He leans in closer, his fingertips sliding up and down the sullen softness of that leather covering the lower part of her face. His lips find hers, or at least they try – now that those lips of hers have been imprisoned in the confines of his own face mask. He tastes the leather, as he imagines the flavor awaiting on the other side.

_One more step, my dear._

They surround him like a million broken parachutes. Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket.

As he lets go of her imaginary kiss, she grabs him by the shoulder, forcing him to turn around and face her one last time: she offers him the coin, the sight is heartbreaking and yet, intrinsically definitive.

"To remember me by. To remember _him_  by," she says, as he takes the coin and places it inside the box.

_One more step, my dear._

"Just out of curiosity, what did I say?" the mercenary asks, his feet already marching, "when you heard me talking in my sleep,"

"Sing it again, mom,"

He nods and walks away, as her thin skirt is dancing around her damaged ankles. Her outline in the distance looks like a flag that represents him no more. She gets on her knees as she watches him go - the cascade emanating from her eyes is blurring her vision. Despair startles her suddenly as the man descends the slope, she suddenly knows: her reddened eyes are about to mistake him for any of the rocks along his dreadful path. As the mercenary walks down the steep corridors leading him to the most personal of infernos, the doctor embraces herself, her weakened fingertips clinging to the red wool of his ancient poncho. His incandescent warmth is slowing fading in the wind; she shall soon be cold - cold as the heart that has just abandoned her.

They surround her like a million broken parachutes. Incandescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket.

Like a reverse déjà vu, she cups her own face with her hands feeling absorbed and powerless, completely alone for the very first time.


	17. As Above, So Below

Interlude

Chapter XVII

**As Above, So Below**

(The Prophetic Dream / A Woman's Intuition)

* * *

 " _I am entirely alone. I and my shadow fill the universe."_

Angela Carter – The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

* * *

[Eighteen days later.]

There's a yellow candle illuminating the Kahn's balcony. The playful flame, though certainly weakened by the restless wind whistling its laborious lullaby through the quiet night, still dances around an impervious empty space. As it summons a diaphanous shade of amber against the swirling curtains, it also represents a light that is no more. It flickers, though agonizingly; its intensity carried by a capricious breeze. The sleepy city and the intimate night, eternal and inseparable companions in the low hours of silent tribulation, can be clearly seen inside the reflection of the pensive Osh-Tekk's eyes.

As the orange flame flickers, the true meaning of justice cruises silently from the Kahn's balcony to the surveillance spot in the Emperor's private garden where the troubled guard is standing all by himself. The green of the forecourt, wrapped up in a dark shade of nocturnal grey, allows for the weak, shimmering light of the candle to draw whimsical patterns across the swaying leaves below the balcony. The guard's eyes, waywardly succumbing to the hypnotizing phenomenon, manage to travel from the seemingly eclipsed vegetation to the candle itself – the color, yellow, is significant enough for his pained mind to ponder: according to the ancient traditions and mythical beliefs of the realm, yellow symbolizes the purity hidden behind the perpetual search for an evident truth.

Transcending the limits of the Catholic credo, the existence of such a torturing place as a Purgatory has always been undeniable for most Outworlders.

The Limbo-like space, reserved solely for those lost souls waiting for an eternal, elusive absolution became then yet another example of how both Earthrealm and Outworld cultures were inadvertently overlapped in a field so thin and ethereal it could make their most banal differences and segregating vanities disappear in the flickering light of a weakened flame dancing the rhythm of the wind's capricious tune.

Their common ground, mainly composed by a harmony of ideas and philosophies so ancient and deliberately concave in all their convexity; gravitates relentlessly inside that entangled, shared space of lonely emptiness to finally merge the apparently opposite realms in an intangible system of abstractions only reachable through the utmost spiritual plane.

The ritualistic Outworld belief is fully represented tonight in the shape of that candle and it's exhibited, pristine and mystical, before the guard's eyes - each lost soul waiting in Purgatory is traditionally symbolized by a yellow candle. The flame, just like a simple semiology of grief, would become the allegory of the penitent sorrow experienced by those still living in the surface, seeking justice for their beloved, fallen ones.

Only their triumph over the ruthless impunity of corruption would allow for those weeping, poignant souls to finally reach the gates of Heaven.

As the Emperor's unmistakable figure emerges from the confines of his own bedchamber, the silent guard witnesses his dismal apparition with quiet hesitation – the second coin, at the very end of its tether, travels lightly from one finger to another with such simplicity it makes the man shine in the shadows of his own doubts and regrets. That simple coin, the key that should have opened all doors for them, is burning against his skin – its irregular edges, as the uneven surface is flipped again and again against his digits, are creating a branding groove running along the side of his fidgeting hand.

As the flame dances in the wind, it carries his brother's soul. The weakened glow is certainly startling for the penitent man: will the memory of his brother be strong enough to persist in his fellow citizens' minds or shall it die, subjugated by the inclement effect of time leading to the most condescending oblivion?

The soul, in a rather transient form and summoned by that flickering light, ignites the questions he doesn't dare to ask out loud: why is that candle illuminating the Kahn's balcony? Does the emperor feel guilty about the loss of a young man – a loss that could have been avoided with the same simplicity and indulgence that had allowed it to happen?

The rancor and the never-subsiding feeling of betrayal is the rotten, deep root anchoring the guard's cold stare to the monumental figure of the pensive emperor now gazing beyond the walls of his palace.

Mileena's rule had been chaotic and rather brutal; that much was true – but at least they all knew what to expect from her. Kotal, instead, had corrupted their spirits with a brand new hunger: the Kahn had made them all believe that they were meant to be more, that there was more to life than succumbing to inescapable poverty and a perpetual state of constant misery. He had promised them fortune and opportunity, but he had never delivered.

Shao Kahn's rule had felt like a never-ending nightmare for the citizens of Outworld – but at least they all knew that under the million overlapping shades and shadows of such a cruel governor, there was a certain coherence amalgamating all his actions. Shao Kahn would have never played with their ambitions; he would have never given them false, hollowed hopes. He would have never tried to induce them to a fight that wasn't theirs. The man fought his own battles; he didn't need the common citizen to become his improvised fighter.

It has been nearly twenty days since they found that corpse in the Marketplace yet no one has identified his brother's mutilated body yet. The obnoxious apathy showed by the ones that were supposed to investigate Pareedis' death was infuriating for the troubled young guard. The plots and intrigues inside his weary mind were nearly blinding him.

Were they covering for Black?

Or were they actually in the dark, completely clueless, nearly ridiculed by a horrifying crime they weren't able to resolve?

As the emperor's reflective gaze keeps visiting the distance separating his people from the secluding walls of the quiet palace, the storm gathering inside the guard’s eyes is venturing an initial roaring thunder, claiming to be heard.

* * *

His indolent coffee-colored eyes visit the domains of the dormant city. He entangles their unfocused sight way beyond the limits demarcated by the small window in the washroom – each rustic finishing of those houses outside the palace walls is as evocative as it is distantly familiar. Every imperfection in their idiosyncrasy seems to mirror his own shortcomings and all his dark, twisted innuendos.

The cigarette, imprisoned between his tightened lips, is creating concentric circles of dense, grey smoke that reach out, spiraling towards the window.

 _Iridescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket_  –

As the guard contemplates the flickering flame of the candle, the mercenary's tired irises travel through each light gravitating nearby those countless windows beyond the palace. Light, so it seems, is the common pattern bonding their minds in a seemingly equidistant reverie. Those dormant windows, carelessly kissing the day goodnight, are already telling stories of pleasant dreams that are just about to be dreamt – the quiet noises of those fantasies and dreams that are fighting to be experienced by each one of the Z'unkahrah citizens seem to find an equal in the tranquility of the tepid water surrounding his tired body.

Black stretches his arms around the edges of the bathtub – his every muscle relaxing, finally succumbing to a sense of comfort that feels way too alien to be fully enjoyed.

The bathtub, shaped just like a top hat, is made of Earthrealm copper – copper that the mercenary had acquired during one of his very firsts confiscations for the new Kahn. The emperor, knowing about Black's tendencies about keeping  _souvenirs_  from his missions, had finally admitted that the copper he had retrieved from those Earthrealm traffickers was not going to make a substantial difference that could prove useful or even beneficial for the Outworld economy.

Using the foreign material as a beacon to express his gratitude towards the cowboy's new-found loyalty, Kotal had willingly allowed the mercenary to keep the copper – like a tacit sign of reciprocal comradeship or maybe even complicity, the gesture had felt like a heartwarming pat on the Earthrealmer's shoulder. Through a simple, genuinely altruistic gesture, the emperor had found a way to express his appreciation for the cowboy mercenary he had hired to defend his brand new government – the man was, possibly, his best asset when trying to ruin all those criminal clans and illegal organizations trying to smuggle goods from one realm to the other.

Black's only friend – the blacksmith known as Dexitis, had helped the cowboy build the bathtub. But beyond the figurative nature of the object, immediately making it a symbol of power and social status, the bathtub had always represented Black's most intimate wishes: he had always had a hard time recognizing himself as an Outworlder. He didn't want to; he knew his fortune could be only temporary. Being a man of his nature had always implied a certain distance, a certain detachment from the environment trying to mold him: deep down, he was still an Earthrealmer; a naturalized Outworlder, perhaps, but still an Earthrealmer.

The water, enveloping his fingers in its soft caress feels like a reassurance in itself – as stupid and trivial as it might be, he would never get used to bathe like all Outworlders do: standing in the cold, with his feet inside a filthy bowl, as another person washes his body with nothing but water streaming down from a reeking pot. He had even managed to build himself a bathtub in the cabin – a rather precarious one, that much was true, but a bathtub anyway.

Yet the cabin is no more. And Dexitis is no more. And that receding loyalty seems to be stained by the indelible marks of betrayal and  _her_  face: her eyes and the fire, his mask, his poncho – the kiss; the longing for everything that is no more.

He covers his face with his hands, droplets of water envelop his visage in a warm caress that seems to threaten what's left of his affected sanity.

"You know, I didn't take this job just to make amends with you. I want to see him," Zarrabayeusse whispers delicately as she drags a rather small settee across the washroom and places it near the closest end of the bathtub. Her soft-spoken words reach for his ears with the same intensity shown by her hands, now slowly massaging his temples.

As the mercenary throws his head back, surrendering to the affectionate touch, the woman's careful digits start drawing circles that travel slowly from the center of his forehead to the back of his neck. As those fingers of hers make their way across his seemingly indifferent surface, they also seem to try to retrieve the man that's hidden inside of that ancient flesh vessel, trapped inside, nearly buried in his own skin. His arms, fully submerged now, feel the warm caress of the water surrounding his tired system and slowly, peacefully cradling him.

The woman stops and reaches out until she finally takes the cigarette from his mouth and presses it against her own red lips – the concentric circles of smoke are still there, venturing the room, longing to be free and wander the outside. The mercenary groans in discontent. The nearly guttural sound, somewhere in between an unintelligible sign of frustration and the laconic reverberation of his apathy.

As his clumsy fingers start to move under the water, sending out soft ripples across the tepid surface, Zarrabayeusse's voice becomes a distant echo enveloping him. His mind, drifting away just like water running through his nearly bicentennial fingers, only manages to catch a few, disconnected words scattered here and there; lost phonemes lacking all connection or meaning for his tired mind – the sound of her voice, gravitating softly towards him, cannot reach him in his entirety.

"… you know I do miss him,"

"… want to be part of his life… watch him grow…"

"… not fair; you're not precisely… and I know I'm not exactly…"

"He has…"

"… very loyal to you, but Erron – you know I'm family…"

"…  _real_  family."

Wrapped up in his own turbulent thoughts, the mercenary submerges his head under the water – the baptizing moment detaches him from the ashes of a past that still haunts him with the same ferocity of a hungry beast ready to go berserk, ready to make him bleed – his skin, about to be shredded by its urgent, merciless claws, stays under the quiet tide for a brief moment, trying to find a deeper cleansing, trying to get rid of his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Longing for air, the mercenary finally emerges from the silent waters, his numb head rests now against the woman's knees. His aching neck is leaving a trail of drops scattered all over her brown skirt. Her long, olive fingers stroke his cheeks as the man closes his eyes, surrendering again to her blessing touch.

"You don't have to do this," he begins, cupping her hands with his own, yet his weak voice stops and remains hovering in the little space separating his body from her hands. That silken touch of hers, buried under the dust of thirty-five years of oblivion, feels as balsamic as it had felt the first time.

"Well, besides keeping me here, seemingly wrapped around your finger playing master and servant, truth is I'm still your wife, Erron."

There's not a trace of remorse encysted in that bitter line of hers – she's genuine and sincere, just like she was, thirty-five years ago.

He exhales, helplessly, acknowledging that she's right. As Zarrabayeusse reaches for the soap floating on the water – his eyes, following her every move, try to focus on something else, something other than her poorly disguised intentions. The grief he's still enduring after losing the boy and the uncertainty behind Alex's fate seem to be unbearable burdens for his tortured soul to concentrate on the tender affection she is giving him freely – with smooth circles from her fingertips, the woman begins to remove the dry kohl from his face; the memory is still there, intact and fresh before his eyes.

_You know, your face is also part of your body._

He breathes out loudly, the memory is eager to watch him suffer; it is obnoxiously longing to see him bleed.

_You look like a whore who's just had a rough night._

The cowboy fidgets under Zarrabayeusse's touch but it's the unwelcome thought of Alex what's truly making him feel uneasy. Noticing his serious frown, the woman stops cleaning up his face and reassumes the tender, delicate massage around his broad shoulders. He's gone, once again, his mind fumbling towards an empty distance that she cannot seem to reach no matter how hard she tries.

"What's her name?" Zar's voice cruises in the night as her fingers seem to dig deeper into his skull now.

"There's no name," he tries to dismiss her curiosity, yet no matter how long it has been, the woman still possesses the mesmerizing capacity of seeing right through him. His core, shattered and vulnerable, can be read like an open book by those emerald eyes of hers.

"I wasn't born yesterday," her curious tone begins to wander a land that is hers no more yet how could he ever blame her for doing so?

"Neither was I," Black replies, seemingly offended by Zarrabayeusse's rather simplistic argument even though his mind is still gravitating somewhere else, alone, trying to find the missing Earthrealmer in the depths of an ethereal distance that stretches itself in time, evading his every attempt.

"I know. You're 174."

He turns around, coffee meeting emerald for the first time – the stare, deep and engaging for the two of them, seems to reach a dormant part of his system.

"173," he corrects her, even though the fact is as startling as an obvious truth – the moment of epiphany carries a sense of inner oblivion; suddenly he knows, he's sure – Zar's right. Once again, she's painfully right.

"No, my dear – if my calculations are right, you're 174,"

He doesn't know his own age anymore just like he doesn't know where  _she_  is anymore – if she still  _is_ , that is; if she's survived his own fears and regrets. He turns around once more, his torso welcoming the warm water wrapping up his damaged skin.

"He's older now, maybe it'll be easier to talk to him, and I’m the only family he has after all," the woman goes on, trying to engage his distant thoughts – his mind, clearly somewhere else, is being summoned by his wife's insistence.

"Who?" Black asks with his eyes closed as Zar's eager fingers begin to massage the back of his neck.

"My nephew; Aalem. Who else could I be talking about?"

He exhales, engulfed in a devastating sense of guilt – yet no remorse is powerful enough to make him change his mind: he nods as if entering her needs. He won't expose her to a grief she's not ready to endure; not when the one she's supposed to lean on can barely breathe himself.

* * *

The guard still watches the flame as the emperor places both his hands on the railing now – the tempting thought of telling him everything he knows about his filthy cowboy is, once more, corrupting what's left of the guard's broken strategies and seemingly ruined plans. His brother's cruel and unnecessary demise, clouded by a halo of injustice, burns inside his veins.

With only a barely audible sigh to anticipate his moves, the Kahn abandons the balcony and retreats to the confines of his bedchamber – the night will surely wrap him up in its obsidian blanket and dreams will carry him to a more pleasant place, perhaps. The need to escape their own fatal fates seems now an unreachable pedestal that keeps on playing tricks on their fragile minds, making them believe that maybe, just maybe, there's something better waiting for them on a place they have yet to know, yet to visit – yet to find out if it truly exists.

 _This_  was supposed to be that  _something better_.

The memory, vivid and painful enough to punish and subjugate his downbeat senses even further into a painful whirlpool of uncontained sorrow, encompasses him in a sadness that seems to meet no end: as he closes his eyes, he can still picture it clearly in the sullen theater of his mind – his younger brother's face, aglow with genuine pride, keeps on smiling as he tells him the good news they had been waiting for: he's been hired at the palace; he shall become one of the Kanh's men now. The relentless grin, contagious and nearly ridiculous, is making him smile too as the brothers celebrate together in the warmer distance of a happier past that exists solely in his memories.

Way back then, he had made his point: it wasn't about the money – it was about the honor. The brand new emperor had put together a rather picturesque group of individuals: his enforcers. He would stay at the palace, true – but the proximity, the nearly religious feeling of defending a noble cause seemed too pure back then to raise any suspicions in the nearly unexperienced guard.

Now, mourning his fallen brother, the man was beginning to see the true tenor of this Kahn's brutality – a brutality far more dangerous than Shao Kahn's or Mileena's: a silent, ideological ferocity that had quickly stained their morality like a dirty metaphor massaging their brains, leaving a scar inside that cannot be removed because they cannot exactly tell what was it that hurt them in the first place.

The common citizen, the people, had been forced to play the executioner in their own unjustified deaths.

The light from the candle is no more, and the weak luminescence coming from the mercenary's washroom slowly begins to fade as well. As darkness surrounds him, M'horel's ideals and hopes are the only sparks in a night that's trying to wrap him up in unbearable darkness. He shall prove, in time, that his brother's sacred blood has not been spilled in vain.

* * *

_As if self-addressing his very own oneiric state, the man in the dream embraces the fact that he knows he's dreaming and, just like a mystified conjurer, dares to explore those blurry edges that cannot quite conceal the shape venturing ecstasy right next to his own enraptured body._

_Back in the consuming fire, the burning chimera of his desire exhibits a pure yet rather démodé amber hue._

_As his lips lead the way, leaving a trail of kisses along her slender, soft neck, his hands tuck her hair behind her ears._

_Her legs, pressed hard against his waist, are the perfect trap secluding his skin within their grasp – he wishes, even though he knows it's not possible, he wishes he could stop time and just stay quiet, subjugated by her ways and baptized deep within her carnal type of mercy. He, the man that knows that time can be stopped – the one holding his own hourglass in the stronghold of his ancient fingers, wants to remain there, with her, eternally. The notion of a 'now' that he cannot even touch feels intoxicating yet somehow empowering for him. Those deep blue eyes, deconstructing his essence to his very core, are craving him, exhibiting the very same lustful passion he had once shown for her._

_He still remembers – her outline back in the house, tenderly rocked by the intrepid candlelight. Each portion of hers, traced by his eyes, could never be compared to the actual feeling of really having her._

_Possession, once again, becomes a mere matter of perspective._

_He has her, even though he knows he's dreaming._

_He has her, but even though he doesn't want to let go he knows, deep within the cobwebs of his own twisted subconscious – he's already let her go._

_Iridescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket_  –

_Her breathing is deep and even, almost peaceful. She has found a way to slide one of her hands under his black shirt, her palm now resting against the weathered skin of his chest and slowly making its way down to his navel. Weakened, and enraptured by these new, unleashed feelings, he lets his head fall into the soft hollow between her neck and shoulder. The woman longs for his lips and so she ventures a kiss – perhaps, the first one of many or maybe, the very first in a concatenation of loving gestures that shall never be professed._

_His mouth, though dead at first, is finally showing some signs of life as the tenderness of the emotion wraps him up in a sense of warmth he hasn't felt in a very long time._

_As the perfidy of his lost loves continues to grow in the shape of that woman teasing him with nothing but nearly desperate, carnal affection, his hands begin to move more frantically now, taking off her clothes and placing her on top of him with just one smooth movement of his arms – she's nearly weightless, he soon realizes; she's like a pale feather carried by his windy impulses. She takes off the only piece of clothing covering his torso as his erratic yet determined hands find a way under her skirt, digits eager to satiate a hunger so ancient it blinds him. His fingers, though clumsily, finally remove her underwear._

_But something's wrong, he senses it in a heartbeat – the mercenary stares into her glimmering blue eyes as she moves closer. The woman, longing for him, leans in and whispers something in his troubled ears. Her mouth follows the motion of her diction and her lips are clearly moving, but no sound is coming out of that prison. Agitated, Black becomes aware of his own dream slowly turning into a cruel nightmare; the feeling of déjà vu, experienced all across his cold flesh, is slowly starting to show._

_Yet she pays no mind, she is not aware of the fact that he can't hear her. Laughing an inaudible laugh, the woman tattoos his neck with her lips. He tries to focus once again, tries to swim in his own muddy waters; tries to go on with fistfuls of a ghost that he can't even love in his dreams. Blinded by his own misfortune, and prisoner of a thirst he knows he cannot quench, he makes his way inside her, his pace is frantic from the very beginning as his busy hands start working their way up into the clumsy strands of her auburn hair._

_The sounds of pleasure, elevating her shape, rise from the bottom of her muted throat only to die in a deafening silence. She whimpers soundlessly, with her eyes closed, breathing hard through parted lips – as her fingers get busy leaving trails that burn all over his skin._

_She cups his face with her warm hands. It only took them a torturous dream to finally be able to see eye to eye._

_Her lips move, once again, a mischievous grin of satisfaction anticipates the words she's about to say._

_Yet it's only silence what engulfs the man that should be receiving such a thrilling message._

_Her back, arched and enraptured, explodes as the mercenary places his lips on her neck and whispers:_

" _When was the last time you've been with an Earthrealmer?"_

_Those words seem to shatter her into a million ungoverned pieces, the meaning behind that sentence seems to reach her dormant depths, bringing her contained shadows into the diaphanous light. Her lungs, longing for air once more, engage in a laborious endeavor as he speeds up even faster, visibly frenzied by her new-found euphoria; the rhythmical race perpetuated by their bodies, fully entangled in this maddening motion, is making them both feel completely overwhelmed._

_His tongue comes out and lands on her upper lip, tracing the delicate outline of that silent mouth trying to devour him once again. Her messy auburn hair, carelessly brushing over his forehead, is a soft caress mitigating the ghostly sensations carried by her voiceless image. As she stares down at him with her rich blue eyes, he suddenly becomes tense underneath her touch, his whole body now twitching beneath its grip._

_Yet only one of them is groaning loudly; the image of that mouth, deprived of all sound, is a dagger piercing through his skin._

_The woman covers his mouth with her own lips, awakening his own sickening silence. The troubled mercenary bits them hard, the timid sight of blood is suddenly startling him, even if only momentarily._

_She breaks the kiss only to taunt him again, the smirk on her face is saying much more than her silenced words – he blinks, captured in the midst of a haloing mixture of contradictory emotions; her throat now seems to be making an ulterior effort to finish that final, compelling voiceless sentence – the image of her face engulfed by an extinguished pleasure is causing his coffee eyes to drift away as they both finally collapse on the bed, neither one of them exactly sure where their own body ends and the other's begins._

_Eyelids fluttering shut, finally, as his head helplessly falls back against the pillow. The woman knows – she notices his sullen discord. As he sinks deeper into his own saddening nostalgia, she pulls him into her worried arms, whispering words of understanding that he shall never hear._

_Reciprocating her desperate need, the cowboy rushes to grip onto that overwhelming person willing to help him face his own darkness. His strong arms cannot contain her yet he tries. He's afraid she might disappear; afraid she might turn into dust the minute his arms close up around her._

_He opens his worried eyes only to meet his own fears: she's gone – not a single shadow remains to witness her mystified existence._

_His no longer impervious skin, still covered by salty drops of sweat, still longs to find the echoes of those words she was trying to tell him. Her pristine pieces and his shadowed entirety, eclipsed under the same light, are no longer the same thing._

The scorching warmth suffocating his body emulates a fever that threatens his entire self. Tangled between the sweaty, messy sheets, he knows he's trapped inside his own dark void. His coffee-colored eyes gradually swim into focus, his tired sight finds an anchor in the white ceiling above his head – his wet hair, nearly glued to his forehead and temples, seems to be the cause triggering the chill now running down his spine. The dampening hotness that had wrapped up his entire body only seconds ago succumbs to a nauseating coldness decorating his skin with goosebumps.

He cups his face with his own hands, perspiration dripping down his fingers. He exhales, rather discouraged by his own misfortune, the sound of his own respiration chokes against the barrier of his digits.

Black gets up and leaves the bed – as his legs get closer to his wardrobe, he begins to feel considerably weaker in the knees. He looks over his shoulder and reaches for a blanket; places it around his naked shoulders and ventures into the dark.

He grabs his box of memories and sits back down on the floor – his back and shoulders touch the side of his own bed.

Facing the wooden logs burning on the fire, the heat emanating from the hearth begins to wrap him up again, making him forget all about the cold atmosphere that has startled his skin just moments ago. His own black shadow rises – it plays with the flickering flames displayed before his troubled eyes - the shape grows beside him, stretching itself and spreading from the floor and up to the wall at his left: the magnificent magnitude of such an obscure phenomenon seems to be a living metaphor for his own languid obscurity. Flexing his knees, the mercenary finally dares to open his cherished box of memories only to find the relics he hasn't seen in decades, each one of them awakening countless names and scenarios that are his no more. The silence is only interrupted by the fragile wood burning before his eyes, the small fragments of the incandescent material, like tiny little sparks soaring briefly only to touch a heated emptiness, only to be consumed in the same fire that has created them.

Just like an exorcist trying to cleanse his own self, the man acknowledges his own sins in the shape of those objects he has treasured all over the years: the box is not a container anymore, it has become an unbearable siege trapping him in its centurial interior. The woman in his dream, the one without a voice, the one who's there no more, is still clinging somehow in that recondite, hidden place inside his mind still trying hard not to let go.

But he lets go, as he closes his box of memories and throws it into the fire. Those demons he has cast only to be imprisoned in his own Pandora's Box are now agonizing in the dancing flames about to destroy his every chimera.

_Iridescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket._

He stretches his legs and stoops his back for his hands to cover his own eyes. His shadow mutates, growing in shape and intensity. The same dark halo is still there though, representing the true man that still lives inside of him: a being so dark and menacing that cannot be reached, cannot be touched – not even by the dying moans of his spectral memories dancing their final ballet in the corrupted fire of irreversible, eternal oblivion.

As tears start to stream down his face, the first lights of dawn begin to slipper through the blinds – the new day shall bring a man on his own, with no past behind him.


	18. Brimstone

Arc III

Chapter XVIII

**Brimstone**

* * *

  _"The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do."_

Angela Carter

* * *

Seafood had never been his thing.

The repellent smell of the nearly-grinded fish, floating defenselessly in that disgusting brownish broth filling up his plate was enough to make him feel nauseous. The image of the food and the mental possibility of that fish approaching his mouth could have sufficed to make him throw up all over the table.

The so-called ambrosia was delivered by Outworld's most respected fishermen.  _Out of the tempested waters_ ,  _and straight into the palace's kitchen –_ at least, that's what they said. Their cheerful voices, boasting and singing proud songs of efficiency and honor; the carnival of their prideful souls engrossed in their happy chants and cheers. As the mercenary contemplated his steamy plate in silence, revolving around the pieces of food with his indolent spoon, his eyes focused on debating whether those nasty-looking, dead creatures lurking around the equally disgusting broth should even be considered food.

Not only the fishes per se were disgusting – the waters they were taken from weren't a sight to see either. Trying to eat something from that hostile habitat was simply out of question for him and still, in the back of his mind, he was still having a hard time trying to deduce why the cookers were not willing to offer him an alternative dish.

He had been quite vocal about it but still, no supplementary menus would be offered to him.

Back in Earthrealm, he would have considered the dish every now and then but only to regret it later. He found it completely tasteless yet then an awful aftertaste would remain for hours in his palate, impregnating his gums and tongue with bitterness so persisting and intense it could make him choke up on his own saliva.

But Outworld's seafood was a whole new level of disgusting. And as far as his eyes were able to see, he wasn't the only one experiencing a nightmarish dinner. Sitting across from him, Reptile and Ferra were helplessly furrowing their brows. Torr seemed to be the only one enjoying the meal, leaving Ermac and all his indifference aside. The male component of the symbiotic pairing was visibly delighted, his mouth watering at the thought of keeping those untouched plates for himself.

Sitting at the far end of the table, the Kahn cleared his throat and rested his wrists at the sides of his plate. The amusing sight of his bodyguards inspecting the fish and the broth as if they were made of only God knows what was enough to make the Osh-Tekk grin yet the kind gesture was brief, his lips tightened in a straight line – he was about to make a rather important announcement; he couldn't get distracted by their capricious ways.

"As you might have heard, a new Population Census is approaching," Kotal began, his serious tone longing for their attention, "the Committee has already been summoned, they are already working on the forms and questionnaires but we shall be modifying the procedures this time."

The emperor sighed helplessly noticing that only Black had raised a suspicious eyebrow the moment he heard the word  _modifying_  but that was all, his words had clearly caused no reaction in the rest of the group. The mercenary, quickly recovering from the rather superficial interest he had shown, had glued his eyes to his plate once again – the spoon, hovering above the food like a menacing harpoon.

"You all will be participating as well," Kotal tried once more to engage the group in conversation but this time it was the Zaterran the one showing signs of an indifferent kind of interest:

"We always participate," Reptile spat bitterly, without making eye contact.

"You won't be escorting the couriers this time. You will be inspecting the areas," Kotal Kahn informed.

All of their jaws dropped in unison: inspectors had the less gratifying of duties during the Census.

An inspector was not supposed to simply stand by and observe – they were supposed to visit each house and each building inside a given area and search for Earthrealmers or any objects that could have been smuggled or trafficked from the foreign realm and brought into Outworld. The tasks were done simultaneously: while the interviewer would stay with the inhabitants completing each form and answering every questionnaire, the inspector would be the bloodhound dog searching the place. They were allowed to take prisoners in case someone looked suspicious enough to be taken into consideration and they were also the ones responsible for said prisoners: they had to place them in the wagons and make sure they were taken to the tribunals.

"Now that I've got your attention, we shall begin," Kotal mocked the perplexed group as a satisfied smile curled up his lips. "Z'unkahrah will be divided into four areas: Ferra and Torr will stay in the Citadel, Ermac will take the suburbs; Black – you'll be inspecting the Lower Terrains and Reptile will take the Dunes. The rest of the guards will be deployed to other cities and the far regions of the realm – I have chosen to keep you all as near as possible. The census needs to be completed in five days or less, once you have gathered all the information you will be escorted back to the Palace, where you'll deliver the forms. The interviewers don't necessarily have to come back to the Palace since the Committee has decided it shall be a different group of citizens the ones in charge of tabulating the results."

Ferra opened her mouth to protest but Black's cold stare made her stop: there was no point in whining about it, the plan was already in motion and they had already been dragged down into its intricate mechanism.

"This peace we are all enjoying now might soon be growing shallow, I'm afraid," the Kahn went on, more reflective this time, "the number of Earthrealmers walking among us has increased quite exponentially during the last decade. Not only they are not allowed to stay, but they are also contaminating our people with their violence," Kotal paused his elocution for a moment: the mercenary had spent so much time in Outworld that sometimes it was hard for the emperor to see him as an Earthrealmer. Afraid his words might have offended the cowboy, the emperor nodded in his direction causing the Texan gunslinger to nod his head back at the emperor almost instantaneously as if silently saying  _none taken_.

"This crime we're still investigating seems to be stained by an unmistakable Earthrealmer's signature and it's been keeping me up at night because I cannot help but feel that it shall go unpunished if we don't do something about it," the Kahn confessed. "It's the injustice behind this terrible act of violence what blinds me: they hide among us – they live in the shadows of mistaken interests, forging all sorts of alliances with our most dangerous criminals; it's our job to cast our light on them so they can be discovered and returned to the place where they belong."

Peace was, once again, the leitmotif guiding the emperor.

The Kahn's every decision seemed to be entangled in a desperate need for the realm to remain peaceful and united after an eternity of struggles and war. It was true that the bellicose spirit of Outworld was logically having a hard time trying to adapt to the new-found tranquility they were experiencing: after spending so many decades engulfed in the tragedies of war, peace had always embodied a distant dream that none of them knew if they would even get a chance to experience one day. But now, the always-so-fragile balance they had achieved seemed to be threatened by countless menacing ghosts aiming for their heads.

Trying his best not to get involved in the political side of the Kahn's speech, Black fidgeted nervously in his chair – the Lower Terrains were, by far, the worst piece of land the emperor could have chosen for him to carry out the Committee's orders. It was the less populated area in the entire region, that much was true, but there were countless buildings that were nearly in ruins and he would have to search through every inch of their destroyed structures for any Earthrealmers hiding in their gloomy confines.

The zone had been punished by nature's wrath on multiple occasions. Since the area was too unstable to build a protective barricade around it, the terrains were at the mercy of an irritated sea constantly washing their shores in a rather virulent fashion. Each flood would leave a never-ending trail of dead bodies scattered on the shore and fallen walls and ceilings, exposing the naked interiors of the battered buildings. New squatters would come over, then, to take illegal possession of the remaining structures. As the decades went by, the Lower Terrains became a known lair for criminals and Earthrealmers but even though the place had gained a certain reputation, truth was that the authorities had never done anything about it: they all knew that, in time, the tide would end up doing their dirty work for them.

But not only were the buildings the ones exposing extensive signs of decay: the land itself was completely ruined, there was simply no chance to even think about ever harvesting something, it was impossible to make anything grow in that sordid flatland punished by the waters time and time again. With no food and no supplies of any kind, the occupants of the Lower Terrains had turned the place into a hide-out for criminals and dangerous gangs and now it was up to Black himself to go knocking on their doors.

Shaking himself out of the idea of having to face those people with nothing but two inexperienced interviewers that were surely going to become yet another burden weighing heavily on his shoulders and testing his patience, another thought invaded the cowboy's mind with the ferocity of an obvious realization: in case Alexandra was still out there, there was simply no way for her to outrun the impending Census.

"When we start?" Ferra asked, rather amused about the prospect of staying downtown, near the Palace and away from the variety of troubles awaiting for her comrades.

"The dates shall remain undisclosed," the Kahn replied sternly as he stood up, ready to retreat to his bedchamber after a long day. His plate was empty – he had somehow managed to finish his dinner while keeping a straight face about the disgusting fish they had been offered. Politics, or so it seemed, were an intricate game intended for connoisseurs only.

Ferra's gaze then traveled from the emperor to Torr, her companion still busy with his own food as his relentless eyes went through each one of the untouched plates as if waiting for permission.

As Black sank down on his chair, the image of the coastal settlement set on his mind once again: an obscene amount of almost deserted kilometers was waiting for him. The distance separating each ruined building from the next one would demand hours of walking along the naked shoreline with nothing but two nearly-useless interviewers. Those dead gaps of time were a sure invitation for trouble to present itself – the residents of the area were not happy about the idea of being dragged into the system; in fact, they knew the system didn’t have any plans of ever including them at all: the system only wanted them out. They knew it, the interviewers knew it, and Black himself knew it. They were going to try their best to defend their houses from the nosy visitors coming from the Palace and Black knew, deep down, that the prospects of succeeding were far from possible.

If the people in the Lower Terrains were to cause him any trouble, he would have to place them in the wagon and hold them prisoners. But the wagons had to be full to be sent back to the Citadel so, in the meantime, he would have to walk along the shoreline with prisoners traveling behind his back and the constantly impending chance of being ambushed right in front of his worn-out boots.

Observing quietly from his spot how the rest of his co-workers seemed to be equally disheartened with the news, Black's relentless fingers began rummaging through the contents of his pockets, searching for a pack of smokes. In a matter of seconds, Ermac and Reptile stood up and retreated to their bedchambers, the Zaterran was visibly upset with the hand he had been dealt, mumbling unspeakable words and cursing his lack of luck as his feet marched towards the door. The symbiotic pairing still remained in the dining room; Torr was busier than ever now that those two plates had been left unguarded. Ferra crossed her arms over her chest but no matter how much she would protest, she knew she was going to wait for her companion to finish his extended dinner.

The tiny cardboard box was captured within the tight grip of his shaky fingers – Black took his hat from the table and stood up, beckoning a silent goodnight to the leaving Kahn, still standing by the table. Yet he stayed there and sat back down: his feet on the ground and his back glued to the chair. Only once the emperor had left the room the mercenary finally stood up again and made his way to the kitchen – not only he needed a smoke - he needed a drink, even though his wise senses were telling him that drinking on an empty stomach was never a clever idea.

Alone, sitting on the black counter with nothing but an opened bottle of wine in his hand and the smoke from his cigarette clouding his façade, the cowboy stared at the opened window with a worried look upon his face. In situations like this, the mercenary had always had a hard time trying to decide whether the Emperor was rewarding his skills or punishing his actions.

Visiting the Lower Terrains was, by far, the hardest duty to be performed during the Population Census. Perhaps the Kahn really considered him to be his best enforcer; probably the only one who could manage to find his way through the dangerous ruins. Or perhaps he was as disposable as the bottle he was holding in his hand and sending him to the most dangerous zone in the city was a safe way to punish him, to get rid of him.

He was an Earthrealmer, after all.

As the low hours of the night began to weigh down on his shoulders, the number of empty bottles resting on the table seemed to grow exponentially as well. His mind, at first still stuck in the image of that dreadful place that he had been forced to visit, now gravitated towards an entirely different idea. His dazed head, arrested by a completely different thought: the Earthrealm doctor, that ginger-haired woman he had abandoned in the mountains.

Was she still alive? Was she still around?

More importantly, could she be reached?

Desperation engulfed him for a brief moment: he had to warn her about the Census. The white woman could never fool the interviewers – she was an Earthrealmer born and raised; it was obvious. Her skin, her hair, her eyes: each part of her would reveal the evident – that her stay in Outworld was stained by the inevitability of everything that is illegal, and if they were searching for possible connections between Earthrealmers and smugglers, a less-than-friendly interrogation would be the very least they were going to submit her to.

Black let out a loud groan as he clumsily moved on the counter – one of his legs ended up pushing the empty bottles and, one by one, the fine containers began to kiss the ground. The sound of glasses breaking acted like an alarm for his numb senses: it was time to get some rest, there was no point in revolving around all sorts of intangible people; transforming them into mere castles in the air that he could never reach. The woman was gone, it had been his very own decision to abandon her. He had made up his mind, he had even burnt his box of past mementos as an attempt to get rid of that part of him that could still make him feel vulnerable.

Whether the doctor was dead or alive – it simply wasn't his problem anymore.

Whether they were going to find her, in case she was still alive, in case she was still around, was a preliminary worry that he simply couldn't afford to face.

He stood up slowly, only to feel the rush of blood irrigating inside his head – as the alcohol he had drunk began to impregnate his sleepy senses, the cowboy found himself holding on to the counter; the grip of his hands preventing his legs from falling down to the ground. Dazed and dizzy, the old Earthrealmer let out a heavy sigh as balance slowly took control of his limbs and finally reencountered his whole body.

With nothing but the sounds of his flamboyant footsteps to guide his tired and drunken bones through the dark path ahead of him, the mercenary finally began to make his way to his own bedchamber, his shoulders bumping carelessly into every wall around him – each corner was a nightmare: the dim lights were not helping his blurred sight in the slightest – his muscles, fatigued and exhausted, were begging for his door to be the next door only the corridor now seemed to be a never-ending trap testing his instincts. Each door looked exactly like the door before and none of those gates were the one he needed to reach. His hands, touching everything along his way, were the confused anchors he had chosen to use in order to direct his stiffened legs straight to the bed that would, hopefully, wrap him up during the rest of the night.

The impending hangover was surely going to salute him first thing in the morning, he knew.

The headache that would accompany the tormenting dawning of yet another day of his life had the potential to become a painful anesthetic that could, perhaps, help him forget all about the Lower Terrains and the missing doctor.

He pushed his bedroom door with his shoulder and stepped inside. As complete darkness surrounded him, the man kicked off his boots and threw his hat; the western accessory soared above the bed only to land on the cold ground, right beneath the closed window. The man undressed rather quickly, leaving only his black trousers on. He moved closer to his bed, barefoot, and felt the distinctive pricking of broken pieces of glass hurting the sole of his feet. Too tired to go wake up a maid to make them clean up the floor for him, the mercenary simply brushed his feet with the palm of his hand and quickly jumped on the bed.

At first, he didn't notice her there. His closed eyelids barely distinguished the warmth sensation caused by his wife's soft breathing beside him. The sound, so tender and barely audible, seemed to massage his stunned ears with a delicacy he hadn't experienced in a very long time.

As the darkness of the room enveloped their bodies in the obsidian blanket of peaceful resting, the mercenary reached out for the woman now sharing his very own bed with him: he hadn't invited her; that was a fact – yet her surprising presence was somehow soothing for him. He slid his fingers gently, tracing the outline of her jaw and cheekbones. She didn't move at all yet the nearly imperceptible changes in her breathing were enough to make him think that, maybe, even in the recondite subterfuges of her dreaming mind, Zarrabayeusse was somehow acknowledging his presence.

Black rested his temple on the comfortable pillow, facing his sleeping wife. Even in the dark, he found himself recognizing the beauty of such a delicate moment of intimacy, one they had never truly experienced during their brief time together. The memory of that distant and rather intriguing time, blurred by the alcohol and the exhaustion wrapping up his body, was only reachable by succumbing to the agonizing nostalgia of knowing that everything and everyone that had helped him become the Outworld enforcer that he was now was irreversibly gone.

Dexitis was gone.

His dear wife, L'ampaghna, gone as well.

Their only son, Aalem – gone.

Only Zarrabayeusse remained, stoic and inalterable like time itself – the emerald green of her eyes was a constant reminder for him that all those absences had been the results of his own doing.

The cowboy closed his eyes, finally succumbing to slumber. His fingers, moving significantly slower now, began to massage the woman's temple, venturing those rebel locks of hers and tucking some of them behind her ear. As his digits reached the soft skin at the back of her skull, his fingertips got moistened by a thick liquid substance – the surprising effect, fighting behind the barrier of his weakened senses, became alarming and highly suspicious for him. Black rubbed his fingers together, looking for some tacit confirmation: even though he couldn't see a single thing in the dark, he was certain that the substance was blood.

He clumsily sat up in bed and began shaking the motionless woman but to no avail.

"Zzzzar?" He mumbled, managing to drag out the letters one by one, his tongue too troubled to provide him with accurate pronunciation.

Nothing.

He got up and tried to grab her by the shoulders but his arms were simply not responding. The alcohol had blocked the path that should have been communicating his brain with his muscles. Helpless, he leaned closer to check if the woman was still breathing: the weak sound emanating from her nostrils, echoing through his numb ears, was enough to allow a loud sigh of relief to escape the prison of his lips.

He got on his knees, on the floor, right in front of the bed and wrapped up her body with his arms. The same pieces of broken glass that had hurt his feet before were now damaging his knees, going through his trousers.

"What did you do?" the man whispered, his tone nearly pleading for an explanation that she couldn't give. Yet the only thing he found was an unexpected fist, impacting his cheekbone with the unparalleled wrath and shaking his whole body. Caught off guard, Black fell to the ground, landing loudly on his back - the shock of the surprise was colliding against his receding combat reflexes.

With his mind still busy trying to find the missing attacker, Black crouched and moved on his knees until he finally reached for the table. Stretching one of his arms, he barely managed to touch the wooden surface. His fingers got busy almost immediately as they began the titanic endeavor of searching for one of his pistols: his dormant yet always feral instincts, guiding his digits through the messy panorama where his armory had been scattered all over, finally got a hold of the treasured device that would, presumably, keep them safe. He pressed the weapon against his chest as his finger found the trigger yet before he could react, he was already airborne, flying across the room. His back arched instinctively as it landed hard against the wardrobe – the gun fell to the ground, causing the confused cowboy to blindly search for it until a merciless boot crashed his hand, the sole maliciously moving, twisting his fingers underneath the filthy leather. Black howled in pain, his fingers crashing, one by one, under the heavy boot restraining all his movements.

Taken aback by the sudden attack, his mind got filled with questions that had yet to be answered: why was that person attacking him, and most importantly, who was that person. Throwing punches in the air with his free fist, Black somehow managed to graze the attacker's nearest leg. As soon as his numb senses felt the fabric, the cowboy got a hold of the attacker's trousers and pulled as hard as he could, causing the stranger to fall down to the ground. Seizing the small window of opportunity, Black rolled to his side and searched for a good hiding place: under the bed, he stayed cupping his damaged hand with his good one, waiting in silence, longing to find a sound that could give away the attacker's intentions.

As minutes went by, complete silence enveloped the whole room yet the deafening echo in his ears, caused by the alcohol, was still taking its toll on him. Frustrated and angry at himself for not being able to react the way he should, the drunken mercenary abandoned his hiding place and continued to throw punches in the air, longing to hit a nearly phantasmagorical target that was simply too amused to be bothered by the Earthrealmer's twisted psyche and wounded ego. As the gunslinger kept moving forward, he was thrown off-balance by another body now cruising the room and colliding against his bones: as both bodies fell down to the ground, Black noticed that it was Zar's still-unconscious body the one that was now lying on top of his: the attacker had used her as some sort of a morbid projectile. Infuriated, Black got up almost instinctively and ran towards the table.

He took one of his sand grenades and smashed it against the floor: yet the dust revealed nothing; the attacker was still concealed by the darkness of the room. Finding his efforts to be nearly fruitless, the frustrated mercenary groaned as he moved near the hearth. He placed his hand on the shelf above it and groped for a bottle of liquor: he threw the bottle in the still-incandescent wooden logs hoping to rekindle the flames – the attacker had been smart enough to put out the fire that had been heating up the room yet the red sparks inside the wood were reason enough for his troubled mind to believe that maybe, just maybe, relighting that extinguished fire would be enough for his eyes to finally see the stranger assaulting him. One single, intense and virulent flame appeared before his eyes, yet it disappeared in just a matter of seconds – his senses were drenched in alcohol, he had been too slow to look over his shoulder to even catch a glimpse of the stranger but before he could even reproach himself about his own stupidity, the attacker charged against him like a furious bull trying to get rid of its cruel matador: both bodies, intertwined in a homogenous, incomprehensible mass of flying fists collided against the closed window. With a nearly crestfallen Black underneath the stronghold of his muscles, the stranger placed both his hands on Black's throat and pressed hard, choking the Earthrealmer.

"I'm tired of seeking a perverted justice that just won't come," the attacker finally said yet his voice didn't really ring any bells for Black.

As the cowboy's legs kept on kicking the air, adrenaline trying to keep him alive, the attacker's punishment grew stronger: not only the man was asphyxiating Black, he was also hitting his head hard against the window. As his skull came up and down against the closed jalousies, Black heard the enraged attacker say:

"You murdered my brother, filthy Earthrealm parasite."

The vice in his voice was enough to ignite that part of Black's brain that was still longing to take control of the effects of the alcohol. The mercenary kicked the man in the crotch, earning an uncontained groan of pain in response. Free from the attacker's certain grip, the cowboy turned over his shoulder and pushed the defenseless man against the window with all his strength. As his feet tripped on Zar's body still on the ground, Black began to fall only to land atop the stranger. His head crashed into the attacker's head – the hit was so strong it nearly stunned him.

Screaming in pain, Black held his own head with his hands, feeling the blood already streaming down his fingers. There were tiny fragments of an alien material on his temple; the sharp pieces were as surprising as they were painful. Taking advantage of Black's sudden pain, the attacker charged at him once more, the sudden impact opened the jealousies this time as Black's subjugated back stayed on the still of the frame. Half his back was in the air, hanging outside the window, as his neck struggled to find some stability. Half his back was still in the room, the window frame nearly embedded in his battered spine. Screaming from the top of his lungs, the mercenary found himself running out of oxygen rather quickly - his arms were trying to fight the attacker now approaching him once more with a menacing cadence, a certain misfortune guiding his steps.

Desperate, and knowing that the minute that man had reached him he would throw him out the window, Black fidgeted nervously until his back began to slide its way back inside the room – only his shoulders were in the air now, and the man was already there, only inches away from his face. Resolute, Black stretched his hands and grabbed him by his clothes, pulling him closer, dangerously closer: if he was to die, he would take the bastard along with him.

Nearly leaned back against his chest, Black became aware of the fact that the light coming from the Emperor's backyard was washing the stranger's face in a luminescence so diaphanous it almost blinded him for a moment: official uniform and skull mask; a  _broken_  skull mask. As stupor enraptured his senses, Black discovered that those fragmented pieces of the face he could see through the damaged mask were undeniably familiar: under that skull mask, that face looked like _that boy_ 's face, drenched in terror, just minutes before he shot him to death by the mountainside.

 _You killed my brother_ , the stranger had said only moments ago.

Cascading quickly down his mind, all those missing answers and connections became crystal clear before his stupefied coffee eyes: the coin, the mask, the extreme cruelty towards Alex and Aalem; it all had been an inside job.

 _They are everywhere_ , she had warned him.

Now that face and that broken mask, washed by the moonlight, were finally crystalizing all his suspicions so vividly, the image was so fiercely evocative that it made him feel as if fire itself was now enveloping his whole existence in a vengeful blanket of urgency and violence. Black yelled as he pushed the man away; the same impulse that had freed him had also made him fall back inside the room, landing on top of his attacker. Now that the tables had turned, it was his turn to place his deranged hands on the guard's throat, the irascible need to watch him suffer was guiding his actions.

The man yelled and screamed underneath the cowboy's steady hands, "Murderer!" he repeated, only causing Black's ire to grow stronger.

As the movements from the guard's legs began to recede slowly, both Black and the attacker found themselves airborne once again only this time, it was a tight green force what was preventing their feet from touching the ground. Ermac was holding them up; their violent tendencies had been hushed by his power. That green aura of ethereal gravity was wrapping up their bodies in a new sense of justice yet not even the wisdom emanating from a billion souls could have sufficed to fully attenuate the surprised expression taking over Ermac's face. An official guard and Erron Black, illegally engaged in Kombat, were trying to murder each other while seeking some sort of retribution. And that wasn't all: the guard had accused Black of killing someone else.

"You murdered my brother," the helpless guard whispered, nearly breathless, still dominated by Ermac's imprisoning abilities.

"Well, your brother killed someone I really cared about," Black roared in response, still trapped inside the green halo as well.

"Both of you, quiet!" Reptile ordered as he made his way inside the room. The Zaterran walked up to Black and wrapped his bare shoulders with a blanket he found on the bed – there it was, her blood: the simple, white linen had been stained with Zarrabayeusse's crimson blood. Without asking any questions, Reptile handcuffed both men and escorted them out: as they walked, the intriguing luminescence coming from the outside grew stronger. Once in the hallway, Black's coffee-colored eyes widened in surprise: all those eyes, judging him cruelly, were clearly speculating about his actions.

They had had an audience: there were countless maids, cooks and seemingly casual bystanders all gathered together right outside his bedroom door. The unmistaken horror in their eyes was latent and vivid, reflected by the lights emanating from the dozens of candles that were burning bright in their hands.

He knew then, he felt the certainty waking him up at once as if a bucket of cold water had been poured all over his head: with death involved; it was more than just mere indiscipline.

Their quiet voices, invigorating the gossip traveling freely from one mouth the other, were choked by the Zaterran's voice: "You two will spend the night in the dungeons. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, you'll appear in the Throne Room before the Kahn." Reptile's defining words carried the spark required to ignite the crowd: there would be a witch hunt and their morbid needs were being exalted by the ever-thrilling possibility of carnage itself happening soon all around them.

If only the word 'murder' hadn't been tossed around so freely they all could have thought that it had been no more than a simple matter of the heart, he considered. The sad image of Zar, unconscious and hurt on the ground, had now turned into a bittersweet escape route that he might have used – he, unscrupulous and vile as ever; if only he had had that chance. As Black marched along the corridor, he thought about his wife – perhaps she could have proven herself useful after all: a woman was in the room and two men were fighting.

The math was perfect. Ridiculously perfect.

Only they would never buy it.

It would have been perfect; the alibi that could have saved him seemed so ridiculously well-crafted that he himself would have believed it.

But no; they had said it out loud for everyone to hear it: murder, murdered, kill. The accusation was there, gravitating before his eyes. The echoing voices, as he slowly left the crowd behind, were as alarming as they were certain: now it was finally time for him to face the music on his own. He, an Earthrealmer, had just been accused of murdering an Outworlder. A killing unrelated to his duty; the undeniable testimony of a man that had been corrupted by power and greed – no more excuses, no more lies, no more intrigues.

He lowered his head, overwhelmed and cornered by his own plots now fading away before his eyes. He looked over his shoulder, nodding at Reptile, summoning the Zaterran with a simple gesture:

"There's a woman in the room," he began - his tone was worried; genuine.

No, she was not an alibi; she was a defenseless woman that had been unfairly attacked because they were trying to get to him.

"She needs medical attention."

Perhaps  _he_  could prove himself useful after all.


	19. Poisoning the Well - Part I

Arc III

Chapter XIX

 **Poisoning the Well** \- **Part I**

* * *

  _"There's a lot you don't know._

_There's a lot I can't tell._

_Would you think I'm crazy_

_If you knew me that well?"_

The Pierces – Save Me.

* * *

The ferocious voices roaming inside each cell in that cold, obscure dungeon were less than cheering. Yet his ears, quickly submitted to the sounds of taunting remarks, were being massaged by the prestige of someone who knows himself superior: his own inalterable ego, wrapping him in a comfortable blanket of easiness, was the only anchor he needed at the time that required calm. Patience was a virtue he had nurtured all over the years, he knew.  _Adaptable_  had always been a word that could describe him in all his entirety.

The mercenary stretched his legs and walked towards the dark metal bars separating his captive body from the outside. He would go, see the Kahn, tell his story, and that night he had had to spend making up all sorts of insults inside that putrid cell would become just another bitter memory for him, soon to be lost in the oceanic amount of forgettable days he had already lived. One more pearl to be added to the bittersweet, heavy necklace that his days as a prisoner had formed around his neck – each shiny bead a painful memory.

Back in Earthrealm. Before eternity.

"It's time."

The Zaterran opened the door and ushered him out, his hands were still handcuffed and behind his back. Reptile grabbed him firmly by the shoulders, the blanket covering his naked torso slipping through the green claws.

Enforcers on parade, or so it seemed – their images blended together with the sardonic smiles of the inmates watching the scene with avid eyes. All ingredients adding to the fatal equation: something was not right and, certain as a riot about to explode, the presence of an imprisoned Black was building up the notion - the Earthrealmer was going down.

Sweet revenge; the ultimate prize they had been waiting for, was finally occurring.

As the Earthrealmer walked past each cell, the inmates taunting him on the other side of the dark bars seemed joyful enough to sing songs about death and retribution. He was responsible for their predicament, after all – now, watching the fallen enforcer walking down the same corridors that had led to their doom seemed thrilling enough to forget, even if only momentarily, that they were prisoners as well, trapped inside that depressing dungeon; deprived of that previous liberty they had enjoyed until the Earthrealmer decided it was high time he took it away from them. The day had finally arrived, the bastard that had imprisoned them, the one they had killed countless times in their wildest dreams had been lowered to their same disgusting, repulsive level; and it was as accelerating as well as it was exciting.

The prisoners, with their eyes glued to his handcuffed wrists, were reminding the gunslinger that judgment day was approaching him, certain and unavoidable like a new morning always follows after a long, dark night.

Half-smiles and dirty words were longing to find him, lacerate his spirit and tarnishing his soul."What's wrong,  _man cow_?" One of the inmates jibed loudly as Black walked past his cell. His arms intertwined in the bars, his broad smile exposing the few scattered teeth that were still attached to his mouth.

"It's  _cowboy_ , asshole," the mercenary jeered back, a half smile curling up his upper lip even if involuntarily.

"Are you one of us now, Earthrealmer?" Another prisoner gushed rather ironically.

Yet the ever-distant cowboy kept on marching through the corridor, escorted by the visibly fed up Zaterran, never making eye-contact and trying his best not to fall for the easy jokes, not to react, not to unleash the beast dwelling inside; the one being constantly nagged and insulted by each irascible comment thrown his way. He held his head up high, careful of his surroundings yet marching with a clear destination like a proud, strong stallion aiming for the finish line – never distracted by the nimieties of those nefarious voices, never giving in; never surrendering to their miserable kind of delight.

"You should be so lucky," Black mumbled to himself, the elocution barely audible. He narrowed his eyes in discontent and spat disdainfully at the dantesque sight he was being forced to witness – his disrespectful saliva acted as a mere reminder for everyone trying to state the obvious: even if he had been the one responsible for their lack of freedom; he still was untouchable – even now, when the tables seemed to be turning, when the odds were ceasing to smile in his direction.

Just like the night before, many curious eyes gazed at him as he made his way to the Throne Room: there were mostly maids in the crowd, visibly satisfied with the image of a subjugated Black after having to suffer from the effects of his Mesozoic views on the weaker sex on multiple occasions yet could it be true? The man with the reputation, the foreign one, the loner: was it all true? Had he killed a man outside his duty?

Marching just a few feet away from him, M'horel was also being escorted. They both were going to see the Kahn together, or so it seemed. They would have to face each other only to throw more lies in the fire in order to save their skins. There was a well-rounded balance to the dance they were about to do; an intrinsically yet bewildering balance keeping the scales in a sacred parsimony of equality: he was one of the Kahn's men, that much was true. Yet he was an Earthrealmer, and he had been accused of murdering an Outworlder. The other man was not as close to the Emperor as he was, yet he was an official guard nonetheless and he was an Outworlder.

To the eyes of justice, they were equals.

To the eyes of the countless strangers that had gathered to watch the impending showdown, he was just an alien, threatening element that had been forced into their community. The contrasting sights were clearly speaking for themselves: M'horel was the legitimate prodigal son – Black instead, was nothing but an imposition.

The mercenary looked over his shoulder to examine his rival: both their bodies were bruised and scarred after the fight that had taken place the night before yet as soon as the doors opened, Black's eyes found a surprising anchor in his wife's saddened gaze. If his battered look alone was reason enough for his wife to understand what a terrible night he had endured, her wounded image as well, in perfect concordance with the deep-rooted anguish in her emerald gaze, were reason enough for the man to see that she hadn't had it any better than he.

She outstretched her hands, trying to reach for him but to no avail. The wall of people separating her body from his was nearly impenetrable, stoically keeping them apart – the singularity of brown meeting emerald was the only bridge uniting them, even if in a merely tacit way.

Black tried to maintain eye contact for as long as he could but Reptile grabbed him by his left forearm, forcing him to turn around. His back and torso were still covered by the blanket that the Zaterran had provided him with the night before. The elements of his methodic disguise were nowhere to be found: his hat and his mask, those carefully chosen companions that had succeeded time and time again at hiding his emotions were still in his room so he was bound to meet the emperor with nothing but his skin and his bones; his naked façade composed by feelings and emotions was about to be shamelessly exposed to those eager eyes waiting for carnage to consume their animalistic souls – the effort would have to be supreme then, nearly unprecedented. He would have to try his best to remain focused; his features turning into a solid wall made by thick bricks of impenetrable indifference. His eyes, the lighthouses of his every motive and pulsation were about to become simply inscrutable for his expressions to stay neutral.

Yet the surprise of finding Zar there, her slender figure nearly lost in the hungry crowd, was forcing him to look over his shoulder as if looking for some unspoken sympathy; as if trying to make sure she was alright.

Zarrabayeusse's head had been dressed with gauzes though traces of dried blood could be seen through the thin, porous fabric. She was wearing a large, long-sleeved white tunic, the one that all patients are given as soon as they entered the infirmary. There were dark orbs underneath her reddened eyes; her green irises were nearly transparent – her pupils were dilated, leaving little room for the emerald to shine through. Her olive skin looked significantly paler than usual – a tall, young nurse was holding her up: it was clear that Zar had talked the woman into accompanying her to the hearing – and to think that he had tried to use her as an excuse to save his own skin. Now, the outcome of all his twisted innuendos and rhetorical subplots were displayed before his eyes: one woman was missing; the other had been attacked.

" _Being with you and being without you have become equally torturing situations,"_  her saddened voice, whispered through the untamable veil of time, was echoing through the distance and damaging his perplexed emotions.

"Hurry, Black. Make yourself presentable," the Zaterran enforcer groaned as he handed him a sleeveless black tunic – the mercenary put it on rather disdainfully, fed up by mere formalities and empty rituals: they wanted the beast to look casually presentable for the circus that was surely going to entertain their boring lives for a little while; so be it. He would give them one. He would play by their rules. Mockery reflected all over his face, the cowboy gazed back at Reptile with a satisfied half-grin and the Zaterran rolled his eyes in discontent. As he sat down at the table they had placed right before the throne, he looked over his shoulder once more, trying to find his wife.  _Is it true?_  She asked him soundlessly, her mouth surrendering to the worried motion of her words – yet the mercenary looked down, unable to answer and feeling how a sudden sense of guilt began to wrap his entire body in its asphyxiating halo of anticipation and profound self-loathing.

Noticing Black's undeniable inability to maintain eye-contact, Zarrabayeusse lowered her head – a deeper sort of hopelessness engulfed her then, making her feel utterly helpless and already deprived of that little, unstable thread of hope she had been fruitlessly trying to hold on to: it was true, the rumors surrounding him were certain. Yet the only thought inside her head and the only wish inside her heart were talking about the same thing – perhaps the night had served him well; maybe he had had the time to craft an elaborate cobweb of lies that could save him.

Perhaps, she prayed.

Maybe.

M'horel and his escort followed shortly after Black. The claimant guard sat down right next to the accused enforcer yet both parts of the confrontation were visibly too absorbed in their own matters to even exchange looks or simply show their lack of sympathy towards one another. The chorus of voices talking about rumors, gossip and improbable anecdotes suffocating the atmosphere of the already heated room halted suddenly as the Emperor's figure became clear - the Osh Tekk approached the multitude and beckoned them before retreating quietly to the calmer zone of the room. He sat back on the large ornamented throne; his eyes were already venturing those faces waiting for an absolution right in front of him. Reptile and the other guard were standing behind the confronters, both guarding companions had bewildered looks upon their faces, just like the rest of the anonymous crowd: it was true, after all, that not every day one could get the unparalleled chance of seeing one of the closest men to the emperor being accused of committing such a horrible crime.

After a brief moment of silence those voices began to roar again; louder this time, as if the impatience encysted in their words could not be contained any longer.

"Quiet," the emperor commanded, raising his right hand with stern authority. "I would like to hear both sides of the story," he said once the crowd was silent, his eyes wandering from Black to M'horel. With sheer intensity, Kotal was asking Black to defend himself from the accusations of an ordinary guard – yet even though the Kahn's interrogation had been certainly aimed for Black to restore his jeopardized reputation, the gunslinger seemed to pay no mind.

"Ladies first," Black cooed ironically, as his handcuffed hands motioned lightly to produce a rather playful reverence towards an exasperated M'horel.

"Black!" Reptile hissed, slapping the daring cowboy across the face abruptly. Black caressed his reddened cheek with his fingertips, patiently yet visibly amused by the guard's severe reaction. His parsimonious digits were awakening the sore, stinging sensation left by the Zaterran on his skin – Black eyed him speculatively and dismissed his angry comrade with a simple gesture of his hand – besides being bruised and battered from the night before, and still suffering from the symptoms of a hangover that had no visible plans of leaving him be, the distressed cowboy was determined to keep a façade of false bravery in front of his opponent.

"I'm just saying – attacking someone in the darkness and beating up a defenseless woman doesn't seem all too manly to me," his words had been aimed for the Emperor's ears yet the gunslinger shifted in his chair, slightly, trying to engage the improvised crowd with his taunting remarks.

The accuser sighed loudly, exasperated by Black's disrespectful manners. He wanted  _him_  to be the one to talk, and talking was exactly what he had intended to do.

"My name is M'horel, my emperor," the guard began respectfully; his concerned look trying to reach for the more merciful side of the Kahn. "I'm the eldest son of the Ssui-'Pcha house. I've been working as a guard here for the past thirteen years of my life – I've served you, my emperor, I have accompanied your rightful cause." He stood up and raised his voice, his demanding tone reverberating all across the room: "I accuse this man of murdering my younger brother Pareedis: the mutilated body you found in the Marketplace – your enforcer known as Erron Black decapitated him, outside of his duty, abusing his power."

The Kahn's eyes quickly scanned the cowboy's unreadable expressions trying to find a satisfactory answer – yet each muscle in Erron's face was not to be deterred by the heated words that had just propelled from the guard's throat.

"Is this accusation true?" the Kahn inquired, his pensive irises seeking for an obvious truth.

There was no point in denying what had already been implied by his own, foolish impulses.

"Yes."

The simple yet final elocution was enough to wrap up the whole room in a blanket of profound silence. Kotal Kahn stood up, stupefied by Black's brutal sense of honesty – the emperor leaned closer, he was at a loss for words yet his eyes were begging the former Earthrealmer for a more consistent explanation.

"I did it. I murdered his brother," Black confirmed bluntly, "but the bastard had it comin' – he killed someone as well, someone I held dear." Not that his words were suddenly justifying his actions, but he had opened a new door that was pleading to be explored. Suddenly that mutilated body was no longer a martyr: it was a beacon of violence and retribution.

"Revenge?" The Kahn seemed to ponder out loud even though his lips had barely mumbled the word for himself. Kotal took a moment to reconsider the situation, his mind raging with catastrophic conclusions, then the Osh-Tekk narrowed his eyes and demurred: "you murdered a man outside your duties because you were driven by revenge? You work for the Emperor; the rightful laws of Outworld are by your side – you're the one responsible for providing our citizens with the justice they so desperately need… you could have captured the man, bring him over, place him in front of a Tribunal – instead you became his judge and his executioner. You had no right to do so,"

"I had every right!" Black stood up abruptly, his raging feet quickly kicking the chair away from him.

"Explain yourself to me, then," the Kahn roared, getting tired of their empty vociferations. He needed substance – he needed the truth.

Upon picking up the chair and placing it back where it belonged, Reptile grabbed Black by the shoulders and forced him to sit back down – his hands were still handcuffed yet the uncontained fury that was running through his veins was enough to make him feel as if he was strong enough to break free from those filthy chains restraining the majority of his movements.

"These men have been trying to get to me, and eventually they did," the cowboy began, staring right back at M'horel for the first time since entering the Throne Room. "They have done me wrong, Emperor. They were the ones who found me when I went missing, nearly bleeding to death. But instead of bringing me back to the Palace they kept me captive, knowing that you were still searching for my dead body. They tended to my wounds, knowing that you would pay more money if I was found alive. They speculated with my life and my welfare, they were actively pursuing some sort of monetary reward in exchange. When I discovered their plans I ran away and made my own way back home. They have been seeking retribution ever since,"

The mercenary's words, far from being soothing, were an incandescent blaze igniting the emperor's temper. The Kahn took a step forward before approaching a visibly perplexed M'horel: it was obvious that the guard was not expecting Black to be so honest about everything they had been through since the very beginning of their confrontation – instead, he had been expecting to find a pointless pantomime on the treacherous cowboy's part. Kotal leaned in, resting his muscular forearms on the table – his undivided attention was aimed at M'horel:

"So, I understand you're a Rebel-Seeker," the emperor commented upon processing Black's speech minutely. His tone was calm yet the storm gathering inside his eyes was about to unleash the utmost deafening thunder.

"Yes. And so was my late brother."

Black's eyes nearly popped up in complete bewilderment: it was official then, the Rebel-Seekers were real, they had been graciously endorsed by the Emperor himself. Angry and consternated, the agitated gunslinger cleared his throat before questioning the Kahn: "Why didn't you tell us?" He didn't dare to make eye contact with his employer yet the halo of reproach encysted in his baritone voice was deeper than the bitter look that had taken over his face - "We had a right to know!" the mercenary demanded, clearly let down by the emperor's misdirected secrecy. Kotal Kahn moved away from the table and sat back down on his throne quietly: his politics had just been submitted to questionings he couldn't afford to face. That fragile peace they had achieved was definitely worth preserving – his authority couldn't be threatened so easily, least of all by an Earthrealmer.

"Excuse me but… what exactly is a  _Rebel-Seeker_?" Reptile inquired timidly, feeling left out of the conversation.

_They are your regular neighbors. Not your neighbors, you live in the palace… They are the Outworlders that are trying to make ends meet by all means. They know stealing fruit or a piece of bread ends with their heads in a basket so they chose to go the other way – your way._

Her memory, latent and eternal on his mind, was forcing him to chase after that face of hers. Her every word, sharp and final as usual, chastising him with the force of a devastating hurricane.

_They mostly chase down the remaining Tarkatans that hide in the Kuatan Jungle, capture them alive then bring them to the emperor. He pays them in return._

Her silhouette in the candlelight, vivid and ever so pristine, was forcing the weary man to narrow his eyes as if trying to trace her invisible outline lingering somewhere near him.

_Now imagine - if a Tarkatan is worth a handful of coins, you are a ticket to paradise._

Paradise. If only.

Coffee-colored eyes focused on the pensive expression reflected all over the emperor's face but Black remained silent, aware of Reptile's interrogation yet seemingly paying no mind: it was not his job to fill him in, after all. Defiant, the cowboy's seemingly impervious stare stayed focused on the emperor as if challenging the ruler of Outworld himself to come clean about the mess he had created with his bare hands. The ill nature of Black's silent reprobation, shining through his made-up tranquility. Suddenly it was about Kotal - the emperor's shortcomings were the only things submitted to the public eye, waiting to be judged.

"I don't have to tell you everything I do, I'm the emperor," Kotal said rather calmly after a while, his mind already regretting the sinful simplicity carried by his polemic statement. The Kahn stood up, walked around the table and placed one of his hands on the Zaterran's shoulder: "I thought the implementation of the Rebel-Seekers initiative was going to be a good thing for everyone – the citizens would get their chance to stand up for themselves and they would be paid in return; they were supposed to make your job easier - that spare time you were begging me for should have been a reality. But they have gone the wrong way, or so it seems," Kotal made a long pause; the question in his eyes was evident, "this situation renders me speechless – for the first time, I don't know what to do."

The crowd, sheltered in a deeper silence now, had suddenly turned into a monumentally high wall for the Kahn to climb all on his own: he had built his own intricate maze and now he was lost in it, overwhelmed by its crazed patterns made of countless treacherous ravines, nooks, and crannies.

They were expecting to be thrilled by the carnival of a potential bloodbath but, in return, they had been given a nearly helpless ruler.

Trying to find a way out, the Kahn turned his attention back to M'horel: "Once you lost Black, why didn't you stop?" the emperor questioned the man yet the only answer he found was guilt and regret in the young guard's eyes. An affected M'horel lowered his head, unable to maintain that burning eye-contact offered by Kotal Kahn himself; the bridge between employer and employee had been burnt down. "I put my trust in you but you merely toyed with it. You abused my every intention and now you dare come here and accuse Black of abusing his power. It seems to me we all have transgressed our own limits one way or another, and now we are all to blame for surrendering to such low acts of impertinence," Kotal sentenced, his voice suddenly turning darker than usual.

"You made promises that you knew you couldn't keep!" M'horel fought back violently, his agitated heart trying hard not to give in.

Cornered by the disrespectful guard's renewed accusation, the troubled Kahn had no choice but to widen his eyes in surprise: floating around the room, the word "trial" was being whispered – the people, talking on corners, were demanding a new course of action. Their voices were getting louder almost in unison. Fearing a riot was about to take place right before his stupefied eyes, Reptile immediately tried to calm them all down but his efforts were to no avail – the agitated crowd had made its choice: they wanted to know, they needed to know – the problem displayed right in front of their curious eyes was much bigger than what they had thought.

"Quiet, all of you!" Kotal Kahn yelled, trying to talk some sense into them: "Black is not eligible for trial: he's not an Outworlder and he has already confessed to being guilty of the crime of assassinating this man's brother." Standing in the center of the room, right in front of the table, the Kahn ordered: "Both of you, on your knees."

Reptile removed the chairs so they could kneel before the emperor – in a matter of seconds, two more guards entered the room and removed the table, the little space separating the emperor from the two men now waiting for a resolution seemed to have stretched itself in time and distance.

"Empty the room," Kotal ordered Reptile in a low tone, never losing sight of the two men that had played with his trust.

"Let her stay," the mercenary demanded as he looked over his shoulder to meet his wife's worried eyes.

Reptile looked at the woman as well: he remembered her from the previous night; M'horel had attacked her – the results of their interaction were exhibited before their eyes for everyone to see, "Black, you heard the Kahn: this won't be a trial, there's no need for witnesses to remain here," the Zaterran stated sharply as he beckoned and guided the people out, trying to force them all into leaving the Throne Room as quickly as possible.

"She's not just a witness, emperor," Black begged, "she's more than just the living testimony of this man's cruel attack: she is my wife."

Kotal and M'horel locked eyes in incredulous surprise: the cold-hearted mercenary was a married man.

"Close the door," Kotal Kahn ordered as he turned around and walked towards Zarrabayeusse – the damaged woman stood still in the presence of the visibly puzzled emperor, the young nurse that was still watching over her was completely covered by the Kahn's menacing shadow. The emperor's eyes, narrowed and clouded by this new, bittersweet doubt, were reaching out for her. The crowd had disappeared by now, they were finally alone. As the Zaterran enforcer closed the copper-colored gates behind him a nearly whispered line escaped the Kahn's lips as he looked over his shoulder, the innuendo aiming for Black: "This cannot be – I remember everything… your problems with the ladies, how you mistreated and abused every female maid and companion that has ever walked through these corridors; now it turns out you're a married man?" He asked as he turned around slightly, forcing Black to meet his incredulous eyes but the Earthrealmer remained silent, knowing that his confession had opened the very door that he had tried to keep locked down for so long.

Accepting his silence as an unspoken affirmation, the emperor went on:

"Then how could you accept her as your lackey?" A nearly frustrated Kotal asked, struggling for understanding. "How could you ever lower your own wife to such a basal state?" the emperor mumbled, his severe and cold stare was trying to find a crack in that wall made of flesh and bone kneeling down just inches away from him. "She is…"

The thought was simply too morbid to be said out loud.

"Aalem's aunt," Black finished for him. Simplicity and coldness adorned his words as if trying to lessen the shock of the surprise he had brought upon the emperor.

He couldn't say exactly why he needed her there – perhaps fear of the unknown was reason enough for him to want her near. Truth was that she was his strongest weapon against M'horel: her wounds and scars alone could be powerful enough to melt the Kahn's merciless heart and grant him an advantage over his unexpected opponent. Yet there was something more, something other than mere strategies and tactics: he had thought it would be easy; fooling the Kahn into buying yet another one of his stories - but the man kneeling down right next to him was putting up a good fight. He had already revealed much more than he could handle, had said so much more than he had initially planned – her emerald eyes, and the tender affection they were projecting towards him were making him feel that he wasn't entirely alone; that no matter what was to come, she would stand by his side.

"And you had no objections whatsoever?" The emperor inquired Zarrabayeusse, still trying to understand. "You embraced this life he offered you – as his lackey, even when you were his wife?"

Zarrabayeusse nodded in silence, ashamed, unable to let the words flow freely.

"I understand that the bond between husband and wife has its own particular dynamics; I also believe said bond to be holy, even sacrosanct no matter if our beliefs differ – but still, may I ask you why?" Candor in his voice, his expression softened as he moved closer to question the wounded woman.

"I wanted to be near him," she finally managed to say, "and by being near him, perhaps I would be able to reunite myself with the only relative I have left, my Kahn," she lowered her head to avoid eye contact as the nurse moved closer, holding her up by her shoulders.

"Aalem," the Kahn whispered. The name alone was reason enough for the mercenary to fall apart no matter how hard he was trying to keep a straight face.

The woman nodded.

"But he is not here – not anymore. I trusted you were well aware of this," the emperor stated quite simply.

"I was, my Kahn," Zar began to explain, "but Erron and Aalem are close – very close; they have always been. Just by being near this man I already feel closer to my nephew," she ventured the room and placed her delicate hands on Black's shoulders – the warmth of her touch reaching for him as if trying to invoke his most sensitive side. Moved and consternated, the Kahn called out for Reptile. The Zaterran reappeared in just a matter of seconds, the worried look on his face was still there; the shadows of that particular doubt were persistent, creating a brand new tension between the enforcer and his employer.

"Bring me the Palace Barrister," the emperor ordered – Reptile nodded in agreement and marched then, still puzzled about the news about the Rebel-Seekers initiative yet resolute.

Alone in the room, the silent tension between Black, M'horel, Zarrabayeusse and the emperor seemed to grow by the minute. After a few moments, the Zaterran returned: a small man stood by his side. Yvo, the trustworthy barrister, the one that looked exactly like a miniature old Viking, was carrying a yellowish scroll in his hands.

"We have a delicate situation here," the Kahn indicated the recently arrived barrister, "Erron Black has confessed a crime against an Outworlder – an assassination unrelated to his duty. There cannot be a trial for him: he has already confessed, and he is not an Outworlder."

"You are correct," Yvo sentenced simply. "Erron Black is only a naturalized Outworlder and, to the eyes of our rightful laws, naturalized Outworlders are not eligible for trial since they merely pretend to be something they are not. They have some benefits though, but the chance for a fair trial is not one of them, I'm afraid. Also, if he has already confessed to being guilty of this crime, there's not much to be done here. There are some guarantees that protect naturalized Outworlders as long as they follow the rules provided by their employers – but since this crime has been perpetrated outside of his duties for you, my Kahn, this doesn't seem to be the case either," the short man concluded.

"What about his years of service? What about his seniority? Could these factors be seen as potential mitigating circumstances?" the Kahn asked, worried about the prospect of losing one of his best enforcers to his own reckless irascibility.

Yvo scratched his chin minutely, examining the possibilities: "Could be," he let out softly as if talking to himself, "also, he's been a naturalized Outworlder for nearly thirty years now," the barrister added quite enthusiastically as he slid his fingers through his grey, long hair.

Black smiled in silence: the odds were finally in his favor.

"No, it wasn't so long ago. I naturalized him myself when he began to work for me as an official enforcer, once the war was over and I became emperor of Outworld," Kotal corrected the old man.

"I'm afraid that's not correct, my Kahn," Yvo retorted shyly.

"I beg your pardon?" Kotal Kahn was astonished: he had always suspected Black to be a man of many layers but the profound implications he was unveiling seemed almost ridiculous to be true. There was more to him, that had always been an obvious statement – yet it all was too much for the Kahn to handle.

There were three ways for a non-native person to achieve the status of 'naturalized': by marriage, by legitimate progeny or by royal decree – the latter possibility was also known as 'decree of necessity and/or urgency'. The Kahn himself had naturalized Black as soon as he became one of his official enforcers via royal decree so there was no room for doubt inside his head.

Trying to prove his words to be true, Yvo handed the emperor the scroll he had been carrying – scanning quickly through the old calligraphy, Kotal Kahn found the answer he had been searching for: Erron Black had already been naturalized, prior to the royal decree he had endorsed for him – he had been naturalized by marriage.

The letters displayed before his wary eyes were adding to the enigma instead of solving it:

_Certificate of Marriage._

**_Erron Black (Earthrealm) – Zarrabayeusse Zmbrá (Edenia)_ **

_Here to witness this union, L'ampaghna Zmbrá (Edenia) & Dexitis Rua (Outworld) appear today in the Family Tribunal of Outworld._

_Number of officiants solemnizing this matrimony: 3_

_This union is celebrated and made official according to the rightful laws of Outworld marriage and it contemplates the latest amendments of these regulations established by Kahnum Mileena._

Infuriated, the emperor discarded the piece of paper as if its impertinence was burning against his skin – its nearly weightless nature allowed it to fall down to the ground quite gracefully, rocked in the risky, heated atmosphere of the Throne Room.

"Why didn't you tell me you had already been naturalized by marriage? You knew I was going to sign your decree the moment I became emperor!" Kotal Kahn yelled violently – a bemused look on his face was letting the Earthrealmer know that the emperor was not fond of this sort of surprises.

"Do you think I could have gotten as close to you as I did by being a simple Earthrealmer? Let's be honest, Kotal – a non-naturalized Earthrealmer could have never caught your attention like I did," Black stated but his honesty was not being well received by the tempested Kahn's furious stare. "When you hired me, I knew I was putting myself at risk – becoming one of your guards was accepting a dangerous position," Black began, his tone softer now, "I didn't say a word about my marriage because I was trying to protect Zar," his eyes found hers, coffee meeting emerald in a silent bonfire of things unsaid, "Now, when you hired her… well, I'll confess that was an unexpected surprise; but it was good anyway: I was finally able to have her near me after all."

"What else should I learn about you, Black?" The Osh-Tekk demanded, his remark embedded in sheer irony. "Do you have children?"

"No," The mercenary answered, the seriousness of his elocution was colliding against the sardonic question.

"That is just odd, especially considering the fact that you've been married to this woman for a very long time," Yvo's pensive eyes were accompanying the old man's quiet conclusion. The Kahn looked over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes, intimidating the barrister. "I mean… it  _is_  weird, my Kahn. Outworld women tend to… procreate as soon as they marry and… they repeat the procedure until… well, until their  _limited_   _biology_  forsakes them, causing them to stop being considered as useful members of our society," the barrister concluded, stuttering nervously.

Black shrugged and rolled his eyes: and to think they all thought  _he_  was sexist. Letting out a loud sigh he found an anchor in Zarrabayeusse's saddened visage. The woman nodded silently as if allowing the mercenary to be brave and say it out loud.

"She's unable, I'm afraid," Black announced, solemnly.

"You married an infertile woman?" Yvo asked quickly, the shock of the surprise was so overwhelming the man didn't even stop to think about the horrible thing he was implying.

Kotal Kahn gave the barrister a cold look full of despondency and reprobation, forcing him to remain silent.

"If anything – such a noble gesture proves the kind of man that you are, Earthrealmer: a good one," the Kahn reflected, his hand resting on Black's nearest shoulder, "a sterile woman is seen as a pariah by the rest of our society – they are thought of as lesser beings; as an incomplete work. Yet you chose her and you married her anyway." He noticed Zar's eyes tearing up and his softened gaze traveled the distance, soothing the battered woman's thoughts: "You cannot be condemned for something you weren't responsible for," Kotal indulged her, understanding the deep-rooted sadness engulfing her.

"I feel profoundly touched by all this mediocrity," M'horel interrupted them, still kneeling on the ground, "but I am your employee as well, and I am an Outworlder, born and raised – if he can obtain privileges from all this, I don't see why I can't."

Reptile rushed his way towards the rebellious guard and, with a push of his hands, forced him to keep his head down. Kotal Kahn sat back down on the throne – with a simple gesture of his hands he dismissed a still moved Zarrabayeusse; the woman hesitated at first but obeyed anyway. Reptile followed the woman and the nurse – only Yvo remained there, with the three of them.

The Kahn was struggling to maintain an impossible balance between two conflicting elements that were seemingly irreconcilable. He narrowed his eyes, searching for a way out, an elusive solution that he just couldn't seem to find. After a moment of complete silence he cleared his throat and announced: "One of you is one of my closest enforcers – I hired you, Black, I made you who you are today. The other is a Rebel-Seeker, a position I myself created," he paused, his voice was grave, the dark severity in his tone was unusual. "As you can see, it's hard not to pick  _me_  as the main responsible for everything that has happened between the two of you. It shall be me the one to judge you – the weight of whatever decision I make, the weight of this responsibility shall be mine, and mine only."

"What do you mean, emperor?" Yvo questioned, bewildered, even if only looking for further clarification on what was about to happen. There _was_ going to be a trial after all – behind closed doors and in secluded secrecy. The Kahn himself would become the judge and possibly the executioner. The ax of his particular fashion of justice and morals would hover over their heads, waiting patiently for one of them to crumble down.

"They'll expose their allegations to me. I shall be the one to decide upon their fates," Kotal explained, in case there still was any room for doubt. "M'horel – since you claim you feel at disadvantage, I compel you to be the first to talk." The guard stood up but the emperor forced him to stay put, "I didn't say you could stand again, M'horel. On your knees."

The guard obeyed, though cursing through clenched teeth. He placed his tied up hands in front of his stomach and began: "I accuse you, Earthrealmer, of killing my younger brother Pareedis. But seeing that you've already confessed your crime, I shall also bring into light that you didn't act alone: there is a woman, emperor – another Earthrealmer. A healer. She betrayed us, and joined Black's side," the guard raised a challenging eyebrow, daring Black to defend her.

The mercenary's ears boiled up with a fiery rage: the bastard had said it – he had exposed her; now she was irreversibly involved in their dirt, and fear and trepidation were taking their toll on him.

"She died in the fire," Black retorted as fast as he could. "This man and his brother tried to murder me by burning down my house in the mountains. I wasn't there – but this woman was," he was sheltering her in the anonymity that is to be dead. In case things were to blow up in his face he had to be sure she'd be alright. In case he was taken away, or in case things were to get even more complicated – in case he was no more, he wouldn't be there for her during the population census. He made up his mind: if he was going to be unable to help her, he was definitely going to try his best for her not to need his help at all.

"That's a lie!" M'horel yelled, infuriated by Black's lack of integrity. "My men searched the place, they didn't find her body."

"I myself visited the place after the fire – she's buried in what used to be the backyard. Ask your men; perhaps they saw a wooden cross," Black's strategy was growing strong even though his heart was breaking at the thought of using the boy as part of his alibi.

M'horel's face contorted in disgust: his men had mentioned the cross yet, unaware of Earthrealm's funerary rituals, they had barely stopped to examine the object.

The pensive Kahn narrowed his eyes in agreement:

"Reptile mentioned to me that he heard Black say that your brother had murdered someone he held dear," his tone, now softened, was reflexive as if trying to unveil the mysterious jigsaw puzzle displayed in front of his eyes. "Black, this maze is a nightmare. If we're to find a way out, I need to know where the path begins," Kotal went on, "how did you become a target for the Rebel-Seekers?"

The mercenary furrowed his brow – the Kahn wanted a beginning for his story, and a beginning was exactly what he had to offer: "Like I told you, they found me in the Kuatan Jungle," Black explained, keeping a straight face in spite of the lie he had just produced.

"When you were ambushed and attacked by Tarkatans…" Kotal reflected as he recalled those infamous days.

"That's not true," M'horel corrected the cowboy, "you weren't in the Kuatan Jungle. Ask the men who were supposed to accompany Black during that mission: they’ll tell you he was nowhere to be found," the seed of discord was growing, incarnated inside the guard's defining statements.

"I  _was_  with my group!" Black retorted, his excessively fiery response awakening the doubt in Kotal.

"Were you or were you not with your men?" The Kahn asked, visibly tired of the never-ending accusations.

"The Tarkatans were solely a diversion, my Kahn. He was following his own agenda," the guard sentenced, intriguing the emperor.

"Is there any evidence to confirm these things you're implying?" Black asked calmly, his contemplative visage seemed completely out of reach. The guard remained silent for a moment; a taunting smile was already curling up Black's lips in a clear gesture of premature victory.

"Does the name Kano sound familiar to you?" M'horel questioned after a while – the card he had reserved up his sleeve was a surprising tidal wave crashing on Black's hopes. The mercenary widened his eyes: he would have never suspected that improvised young man to know anything about Kano. Yet he did. And now M'horel's thoughtless, reckless indiscretions were successfully jeopardizing his plans once more.

"Kano?" Kotal mumbled, stunned by the revelation.

"I've been investigating, Earthrealmer, I have my resources as well as you do. You abandoned your men because you were chasing after this man Kano; you treacherous coward," now it was M'horel the one smiling, the rhetorical gesture of triumph was more than what Black was able to handle.

"This is a serious accusation, Black," Kotal intervened. The name 'Kano' was an alarm ringing in his ears.

"You're bluffing," the gunslinger dismissed the guard, partially worried yet accustomed to making his way out of all sorts of complicated situations.

"Why don't you ask Ferra about her recollections from that day?" the guard teased, "Ask her if she remembers  _you_  being on the battlefield with the rest of the group,"

The emperor raised a suspicious eyebrow, eyeing Yvo with a rather particular scrutinizing expression. He rubbed his hands together as if anticipating the storm about to rain on them.

"Bring us Ferra, then."


	20. Poisoning the Well - Part II

Arc III

Chapter XX

 **Poisoning the Well** \- **Part II**

* * *

  _"I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat."_

Jorge Luis Borges

* * *

She seemed dubious without Torr; as if incomplete or simply uneasy perhaps. As the tiny warrior fidgeted relentlessly in the small mauve settee they had arranged for her, the signs of her nervousness became crystal clear, now reflected all over her confused visage. Her eyes, widened in surprise, were waiting for a clue that would never come – what to say; what to expect from that particular scene were the only questions running wildly through her mind.

Black's future was in her hands, or so it seemed. The other man, though still fighting, was beginning to express a certain resignation, a certain sense of defeat transpired and translated into his unfocused sight now hovering someplace around her petite figure yet not quite looking at her. Black, on the other hand, was staring at her intently, as if demanding something he was not allowed to materialize through simple words. And the emperor – the imploring eyes of her employer were begging for the truth. Her legs swung in the air, balancing the lower part of her body: that monumental man standing right in front of her was the only one she truly obeyed, she knew, yet the feeling of comradeship between Ferra and her fellow enforcer was still a solid bond – what was she supposed to do then? Succumb to a lie that could lead to her own doom or be completely honest, respecting the trust the Kahn had put in her?

Both sides of the argument were claiming to possess such a capricious thing as the truth; the evident, undeniable truth.

But what was the truth?

"Do you remember the day Erron Black went missing?" The emperor asked her and the female enforcer nodded at first but then she lowered her head, still debating whether to come clean about the events of that day or not.

"I need you to tell me what happened that day."

He could have asked about the jungle, about the Tarkatans – even about the number of rebels they managed to catch that day. Yet he had asked the one question she wasn't willing to answer, the only question powerful enough to condemn Black for good. The truth was they had never talked about it; one day he was finally home again and the truth behind his mysterious disappearance was forgotten under a thick halo of silence and exchanged glances – the feeling of belonging, of not being an outcast anymore was powerfully intricate for her rather simpler emotions.  _Ferra and Torr_ , that's what they all said. An entity, just one being formed by two complementary existences… Black's silence had provided her with a new sense of complicity, he had inadvertently become a brand new companion in this life even if only tacitly, even if only through an unspoken necessity; a mere formality of the very meaning behind the word 'partnership'; the chance to share something with someone other than Torr, the chance to exist as a completed, self-addressed being no longer prisoner of her own nature.

Ferra began to toy with her short fingers; she couldn't afford to face Black: the scorching eye contact he had to offer was an ocean made of fire that could corrupt her, could make her tremble and fall.

"Ferra, we are waiting," Yvo intervened, trying to get the enforcer to finally speak. Time was up, once again, for her to unveil what had remained covered by a mysterious mist of silent understanding. They had left the palace together, Torr, Black and herself. They had stepped inside the dangerous jungle together. Then she had looked over her shoulder and that was it: Black was gone.

Gone.

Long before trouble had even had a chance to present itself in front of her eyes.

Long before the problematic rebels had even had a proper chance to pinpoint their location.

Gone.

Simply gone.

"We went to jungle," she began, slowly, as if unsure about how to go on. The common eye could have mistaken her for a small child, she knew, and so a most conceited part of her troubled mind was struggling to sell that impression, to fool them by bearing a false innocence upon them – yet they knew better, and a mere mirage was not enough to make them falter: they were bloodhound dogs; they had been trained, they knew exactly what they were doing.

The barrister sat down next to her. Her pretended, shy ambiguity was beginning to play games with his patience: she was recollecting fragments from a distant date, that much was true – yet her words were vague, possibly vaguer than usual, and time was slipping through the hourglass of their benevolence.

"We need to know if this man, Erron Black, was present at the moment of the attack," Yvo tried being blunt and straightforward this time.

"We went to jungle," Ferra stated once more, trying to focus, "Bang-Bang with us."

"Liar!" M'horel exploded, unable to believe she was willing to discredit his arguments, "you told me he wasn't there with you!"

Losing his temper, the Emperor walked up to Ferra and stared right into her frightened eyes, demanding: "Was he or wasn't he with you when the Tarkatans discovered your location?"

And there it was; the moment of hesitation – the shared looks that shouldn't have been shared. As her eyes met Black's in desperation, the Kahn covered his face with his palms: her awkward silence was finally revealing the truth.

"Giving false testimony will get you punished as well," Kotal somehow managed to say, stupor tainting the colors of his voice.

"I had been informed that Kano had been spotted right outside the Jungle," Black intervened, finally, "we left the palace together: Ferra, Torr and me. I stayed with them for as long as I could but then I left – I couldn't miss the opportunity of chasing after Kano; I thought I could capture him, bring him to you," She had done more than enough; he couldn't risk the heavy weight of a potential punishment to be added to the long list of burdens he already carried on his tired shoulders, a punishment she did not deserve at all. Many had already paid for his mistakes; maybe saving the child-like warrior could be his last chance for redemption.

"Ferra?" Yvo questioned, longing for some sort of confirmation.

The enforcer looked down, accepting Black's help with bitter resignation encysted deep inside her eyes.

"Bang-Bang with us," she said timidly, "but then Bang-Bang gone."

There was a moment of silence. The chocked sounds of desperation, mixed with the undeniable fear for what was about to come were paralyzing every single soul inside the Throne Room – Kotal Kahn returned to his place, but only momentarily. Engulfed in rage, he rushed his way and stood in front of Black, grabbing the gunslinger by his shoulders and forcing him up.

"You abandoned your fellow enforcers to do something no one had asked you to do. You left them there, at the mercy of those wild, animalistic rebels – there could have been consequences to your irresponsible actions! And then you lied to this Throne; you forced Ferra to play your filthy games of mistrust and deception!" Creating a tight fist, the Kahn hit Black in the stomach, sending him flying across the room. He landed back first against a wall, his hands were still handcuffed so he couldn't quite defend himself from the incoming attack but Kotal was not yet satisfied: he approached the fallen Earthrealmer once again, a patient yet darker rhythm taking over his menacing steps.

"You truly are a mercenary; I should have listened to that treacherous D'Vorah."

_My father tried to warn me about you a thousand times but I chose not to listen._

Amanda's face, ever present in the theater of his mind, was evoking that tacit duality that had always betrayed him: his reputation preceded him; there was no point in denying the utmost visible aspect of his intricately patterned personality. Even if his intentions were good, there was always the bitter hint of a doubt, the  _what if_ , the mercenary taking over the little, fragile remains of his better side.

Ulterior motives, they always said, were the true fuel motioning his every action.

"You weren't trying to respect our laws, you weren't trying to do the right thing," Kotal roared, driven by fury, "you were merely trying to sell Kano to the highest bidder!" The emperor cursed Black under his breath as he retreated to the Throne, his fists still shaking from all the tension he had just released through his elocution. Yvo reached for Ferra almost silently, his light feet moving graciously across the room as if afraid, as if trying hard not to further provoke the beast dwelling inside the Kahn. The small man placed his arms on the tiny warrior's firm shoulders, a half-grin sweetening his otherwise rather impartial expressions.

"Thank you, Ferra. You can go now," he commanded softly, nearly whispering the words. Ferra nodded and jumped off her sit, then ran quickly towards the door – she paused, though, one eternal second for her gaze to meet Black's: his eyes had hardened somehow as if the color of that intimidating look of his had darkened all of a sudden. The affected enforcer sigh soundlessly, the gesture a mere way to reflect her inner struggle, the deep confusion taking over her mind: should she feel sorry for him? Was she actually helpful or not? Noticing the cowboy's attention had returned to his employer, the small woman left the room for good, mumbling incomprehensible words through clenched teeth – she slammed the door behind her, the echoing sound of her frustration reverberated all across the room as a desperate cry of agony, of everything that's unalterably final.

"Get these two out of my sight," Kotal Kahn vociferated then, his tone weakened, but he didn't even dare to look at the two guards waiting for his resolution. He simply covered his face with one of his hands as if trying to avoid all unwanted eye-contact. Yvo obeyed diligently, summoning two guards and commanding them to escort the prisoners back to their respective cells yet, as their feet began to walk down the sullen path of uncertainty, a metallic noise caught the emperor's attention.

The tiny, unevenly shaped golden coin slipped off from M'horel's pocket and fell down to the ground, its capricious figure traveling a most fascinating straight line. Kotal's left knee barely kissed the ground as his hand reached out, curiously, and picked up the coin.

It was indeed peculiar – for a regular guard to possess such selective currency.

"Behold the key to everything…" M'horel reflected rather petulantly with a broad, maddening smile accompanying his ironic tone. Yet the emperor remained silent, lifting one of his hands to indicate the guards to take both Black and M'horel out of the Throne Room. Kotal inspected the coin as it lingered between his fingers – then the metal disappeared abruptly, lost inside a tight, fiercely gripping fist.

"We should go through every single fact we have discovered," Yvo suggested as soon as the guards closed the copper-colored gates of the Throne Room, secluding the Emperor and the Palace Barrister from the world outside those impenetrable walls.

"There's no need to," Kotal sentenced, his voice trailing off little by little as if a bitter sense of sadness had suddenly begun dictating his thoughts, "both of them are guilty."

There was silence, for a moment – the lack of all sound stretching out its ethereal halo and wrapping them up in an uncomfortable, brand new verity: the crossroads they had surprisingly stumbled upon suddenly seemed clear enough to be ventured. Yet Kotal's somber eyes seemed rather disappointed, his whole face suddenly taken over by a profound gesture of grief: Erron Black was a treacherous man yet he was one of his best enforcers – losing him to his own childish impulses felt wrong, it made him feel unworthy.

"My Emperor, if you allow me," Yvo began shyly, sensing the Kahn's inner turmoil, "they are both guilty, as you said, yet both crimes are intrinsically different: malice aforethought versus self-defense. M'horel wanted to hurt Black – he seems calculative and cold-hearted, perfectly capable of crafting such a nefarious act. He instigated the attack by convincing his younger brother. They killed another Earthrealmer in the process - the doctor - and then M'horel himself went after Black and attacked his wife. Erron Black, on the other hand, killed M'horel's younger brother but in my opinion, it was an act of self-defense. The man had already killed the doctor, it all seems to be indicating that Black was his next target and, yes, while some people may say that the body was found in the Marketplace, decapitated and seemingly quite staged, I believe Black was actually trying to deliver a message:  _get off my back or this is what shall happen next_."

The emperor sighed, his tired eyes gradually losing all focus.

"When you put it that way, you make it look as if Black's  _divine intervention_  prevented these  _evil brothers_  from spreading their violence any farther," Kotal said, his voice quiet, his expression pensive and absorbed deep within his own conclusions, "truth is that these brothers… they were blinded by greed, they crossed many lines they should have never dared to cross but still, we cannot thank Black for getting rid of them, he is not a vigilante – he should have stepped forward and presented his case… he should have remained loyal to our laws instead of imparting his own twisted sense of justice."

Yvo lowered his head and nodded, the wise emperor was right.

"There's one thing that troubles me deeply, though, maybe even deeper than this unfortunate affair we've encountered ourselves with," the Kahn went on, his eyes had resumed the newly-found task of carefully inspecting the coin he had confiscated from M'horel only minutes ago.

"What is it, my emperor?" Yvo asked in a low tone, as he took two short steps forward, approaching the Throne.

"The dead doctor."

Yvo nodded once again, finally able to see through the Kahn's worried expression: the doctor's death could potentially cause trouble with Earthrealm's authorities, should the news escape the secrecy of the palace walls.

"And Kano," Kotal added, finally, already feeling the headache that implied having that name resounding inside his head once again.

"So, what's it going to be, then, my emperor?" Yvo questioned, looking for a resolution. The Kahn flipped the coin until its edges began to feel as if they were burning against his skin – the conclusive feelings stirring inside of him motioning in the same way, turning and tossing inside of him, scorching his interiors with what seemed to be brand new brimstone.

"I need Reptile to talk to Black - perhaps he can persuade him into telling us those things he's still hiding," Kotal said, the coin still resting against his palm. The barrister nodded and lowered his head in silence, quickly making his way out of the Throne Room.

* * *

"My Kahn, are you sure?" The Palace Barrister questioned one last time, his eyes still inspecting the paper he was holding between his fingers. Kotal had spoken his mind, he had pronounced himself and the hesitating barrister had been his personal scribe, taking note of every single one of his words until the proclamation was finally ready. A steady voice had guided the emperor's resolution, the penalties were to be unprecedented –  _exemplary punishments_ , he had said.

"Yes. The information provided by Reptile was indeed useful," Kotal reflected, his gaze wandering outside the window, inspecting the crowded courtyard.

"That's in case Black was honest," the small barrister seemed to ponder out loud, raising a suspicious eyebrow. According to Black himself, there was no need to involve the Special Forces: he claimed that Kano was dead, he had killed the man himself the very same day of his untimely disappearance. Kano had been the one who had wounded him, his body had collapsed after the fight, he would have nearly bled himself to death if it wasn't for the Rebel-Seekers intervention. On the other hand, the anonymous woman that had tragically died in the fire was an illegal immigrant, there was not a single record about her, she was a ghost.

No need to inform her death to the Special Forces, after all, there was not a single trace, not a single clue that could connect the fallen doctor to Earthrealm. She was merely a nobody, and a nobody could definitely be an Outworlder for the common citizen.

Yvo made his way to the courtyard, knowing that Kotal Kahn's unreachable, inscrutable eyes were to follow his every move once in front of the crowd: it was his job, after all, to be presented as mere cannon fodder, to be offered to the ever impassible crowd for the show to begin. He stood on the wooden dais; both Black and M'horel were also there, just a few steps to his right. He eyed the men still waiting for a resolution and gulped, already knowing what fate had in store for them. He beckoned Ermac and Reptile, the only enforcers that were present in the scene, and signaled the escorts to take their places behind both parts of the conflict – the crowd was roaring louder than before, their uncontainable hunger was about to be sated.

Kotal raised his right hand as he stood motionless in the balcony – a simple gesture to indicate them all that it was time to begin.

Yvo cleared his throat, taking a short step forward and causing the wild multitude of faces to stay quiet. With a flickering tone, he began to read out loud:

"We are gathered here to announce the Emperor's resolution and final say regarding the civil and penal concerns of the two men appearing before our Royal Magistrate. It is with a heavy heart that I, Kotal Kahn, Emperor of Outworld, announce the measurements that are detailed in the following proclamation," the Palace Barrister paused for a brief moment, indicating M'horel to take a step forward. The escort accompanying him followed his step, watching over the guard, his steady hands resting on M'horel's shoulders, restricting his moves.

"The first individual, publicly known as M'horel Ssui-'Pcha, is found guilty of the following crimes:

Attempted murder against the official enforcer known as Erron Black, twice.

Attempted murder against the official enforcer known as Erron Black's wife, lady Zarrabayeusse Zmbrá Black.

Criminal mastermind behind the fire that destroyed Mr. Black's personal property and led to the assassination of an unknown woman who was present in the scene. This crime, in particular, places Mr. Ssui-'Pchá as the necessary perpetrator and thus responsible for the physical disappearance of the victim.

Mitigating circumstances: none.

Aggravating factors: considering the fact that Mr. M'horel Ssui-'Pchá currently serves as an Official Palace Guard, the figure of  _Abuse of Authority_  applies to this case. The crime committed by the individual was especially heinous, atrocious and/or cruel. The capital felony was a homicide and was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner without any pretense of moral or legal justification.

It is the judgment of this Royal Office:

For the murder of an unidentified woman, the individual is sentenced to be put to death in the manner prescribed by law. For the attempted murder of Erron Black and Zarrabayeusse Zmbrá Black the individual is sentenced to be put to death in the manner prescribed by law,"

Yvo's voice quivered through the reading, exposing his nervousness. The crowd was immersed in a profound silence now: that man standing there in front of them was the image of defeat itself. He, the once neighbor turned to guard, one of the leaders of the Rebel-Seekers initiative was cruelly meeting his end. The executioner approached them, the ax already reflecting the iridescent lights of the hot midday sun – M'horel lowered his head in complete resignation, embracing his destiny, partially relieved to know that his death would reunite him with his fallen brother: both comrades and relatives would turn, in time, into the flag for the average citizen to shelter themselves with, to wrap themselves up with.

Clearing his throat, the Palace Barrister now turned over his shoulder and indicated Black to take a step forward as well. The guard standing right behind him outstretched his arms – his steady yet sweaty hands resting on the cowboy's shoulders, restricting his moves. Black kept his head held high - no matter the outcome, at least the bastard standing right next to him would be accompanying him to the gates of hell.

Yvo lifted his hands, demanding silence from the crowd since some incipient voices had started to reach their ears once again, then continued.

"The second individual, publicly known as Erron Black, is found guilty of the following crimes:

The murder of the individual publicly known as Pareedis Ssui-P'chá, younger brother of the first individual, M'horel Ssui-P'chá, who was responsible for the destruction of Mr. Black's property and the death of the aforementioned unknown woman.

Mitigating circumstances: the crime for which the individual is to be sentenced was committed while he was under the influence of a mental or emotional disturbance. The crime for which the individual is to be sentenced was committed as an act of self-defense.

Aggravating factors: considering the fact that Mr. Erron Black currently serves as an Official Enforcer of the Emperor's Office, the figure of  _Abuse of Authority_  applies to this case.

It is the judgment of this Royal Office:

For the murder of Pareedis Ssui-P'chá, the individual is sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment in the Z'unkahrah Royal Palace Maximum Security Dungeon for ten years. No parole will be allowed or offered during the first half of the specified term.

During his imprisonment, the individual shall be removed from his duties and lose his status as an Official Enforcer of the Emperor's Office.

During his imprisonment, the individual's wife will receive a pension derived from the individual's incomes and official salaries as if he was still working as an Official Enforcer of the Emperor's Office."

Stunned, the mercenary spat despondently: the Kahn had opted to save his life yet the bitter feeling encysted deep in his chest was gradually blinding him. As the crowd began to roar its irrepressible fury towards the decisions that had just been made, Reptile rushed his way and sheltered Black from the countless objects that the wild public was throwing in his direction. The Zaterran grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him inside again, this time the path in front of his tired feet was the last one he was going to walk in a very long time.

Lost in the sea of countless enraged faces, Zarrabayeusse witnessed his furtive disappearance with teared up eyes: she had once coped with his cruel and unexpected abandonment but now that she had found him, now that they had been provided with the closest approximation to an actual second chance, the image of her defeated husband being escorted to a common cell was making her feel as if she was losing him all over again.

Theirs was a slow, meandrous journey, the woman reflected as the first tears started to cascade down her cheeks.

As the Zaterran enforcer escorted Black through the numerous corridors, the sounds coming from the outside became terrifying for the mercenary's numb ears: the ax taking a life, its sharpened edges eradicating M'horel's existence from the surface of the most hostile of worlds was enough for him to close his eyes, finally understanding that that gruesome fate could have been his own. Yet another sound penetrated the palace's walls, Yvo's voice once again taking the lead, delivering a brand new message to the people:

"It is  _also_  the judgment of this Royal Office:

To officially terminate the Rebel-Seekers Initiative, and to warn all citizens that anybody still pursuing said interests or actively engaged in such forbidden activities will be considered and immediately declared  _insurrect_. The felony embodied by said acts will be punishable by death."


	21. The Dance We Do

Arc III

Chapter XXI

**The Dance We Do**

* * *

_"You could be my silver springs_

_Blue green colors flashin'_

_I would be your only dream_

_Your shining autumn, ocean crashing_

_And did you say she was pretty_

_And did you say that she loves you_

_Baby, I don't wanna know."_

Fleetwood Mac – Silver Springs

* * *

_[Nine days later]_

"Move it, asshole, you're ruining the show here; I'm trying to offer good entertainment, for God's sake!"

Her shadow had covered most of the wall he was using yet, besides the rude yelling, the prisoner seemed to pay no mind to that unwanted presence blocking the improvised stage he had created. He didn't even turn around to face her, the man simply protested to the shadow as if expecting it to move, as if demanding it to go away.

She had never expected to witness such highly elevated spirits as she made her way to the maximum security pavilion of the dungeon.  _End of the corridor, right under the sign that reads West Wing_  they had indicated her and she had obeyed, finding her way through numerous dimly lit alleyways and rocky corners.

His cell was much smaller than what she had anticipated: the image she had crafted in her mind was not exactly condescending but it was definitely better than the depressing reality she had encountered. That initial mental sketch she had produced was more benevolent; it carried more dignity than the actual room he was being forced to occupy. Just three concrete walls and a fourth one, made by metallic bars and an antique-looking doorknob. His cell did look like a cage, really, composed by filthy walls and absolutely no windows. God, it was small; it was painfully, deliberatively small. The cot was placed at the right side of the cell, leaving little room for some other device that she couldn't quite place yet – the darkness, concentrated and dense, was making it hard for her emerald eyes to decipher what was it that he kept next to the wall, at the left side of his cot.

She placed her hands on the bars, gripping her fingers tightly to them in spite of the odor emanating from the little, poorly ventilated room – the metal was sticky, the sensation left in her skin was enough to make her shudder. Pores glued to the metal, and the humidity, the acid, putrefied chill entering her nostrils without asking for permission.

Still, he remained there, sitting up on his cot, his legs outstretched before him and his back facing the bars. His arms, airborne, were swinging as his hands stayed rather close to the wall yet not quite touching it. His fingers moved; their shadows were creating a most peculiar image, the light and shadow festival now fully projected on the wall. It was a beast she didn't recognize: it seemed to jump as his fist moved up and down; the fingers of his free hand were creating what seemed to be very long ears.

A most peculiar beast, she concluded.

The woman narrowed her eyes: if there were no windows in the room how come he was using light to project his phantasmagorical shadows against the wall? Her chin moved, relentlessly, trying to spot the source of such a capricious ray of light.

Until she found it.

There it was, just a few inches below the ceiling, embedded in the wall opposite to the door. A small, irregular hole, barely the size of a fist.

So much for ventilation, Zarrabayeusse thought to herself, unable to mind the soft sigh escaping her lips.

"Finally," she spoke, her hands still glued, even if involuntarily, to the metallic bars of the cell.

"I told them not to let you in."

Taking a good look at the little theater he had improvised with that wall and nothing more than his bare hands, the woman noticed a timid, slender ray of light drawing a perpendicular line across the room and traveling from the filthy hole to the wall right beside Erron's cot. Following its straight trajectory, the light concentrated on the wall, creating a nearly trapezoid shape for the cowboy to unleash his imagination. Such diaphanous, flickering canvas didn't belong in a place like that.

The nearly bicentennial man kept playing with his fingers, bringing that unknown beast to life in a seemingly effortless manner. Far from the decadent view of that cell, the beast seemed joyful enough as it kept on gamboling over an imaginary meadow. The gunslinger's tight fist was frolic, jumping up and down in a rather carefree way.

The woman's lips curled up at the image; the beast was happy. Not only it moved, she contemplated: it was free. That beast was, indeed, enjoying its precious freedom.

"So you're telling me these people still see you as a figure of authority?" Zarrabayeusse taunted him, trying to detach her mind from that imaginary green meadow in order to go back to reality. Yet the image was truly hypnotizing, her eyes still glued to the chubby animal created by the cowboy's imagination.

"Just leave," he commanded; his voice surly and unwelcoming as ever, in perfect contrast to the amicable atmosphere he himself had created with nothing more than his bare hands and his unleashed imagination.

"You are not even going to ask me how I am,"

Only then the man in the cell shifted slightly on the cot, allowing his peripheral view to asset the woman waiting for an answer at the other side of the bars. He barely looked over his shoulder yet the distinctive white of the gauzes still covering her forehead and most part of her skull was enough for him to realize that his wife was still dealing with the repercussions of his fight against the Rebel-Seeker.

"Still recovering, I see. There's no need to ask," he sentenced, bluntly, turning his attention back to the little game of Chinese shadows that was visibly capturing his undivided attention.

 _At least he got some privacy_ , the woman thought as she shook her head in pensive, genuine concern. The pavilion was indeed quiet, definitely quieter than what she had expected. The silence was prominent and unequivocal – there was only one inmate sharing the same dungeon area with Black: a prisoner that was peacefully sleeping in his cot, in the cell right across the hall. The man looked still, a little too still perhaps. Yet the rest of the small cells surrounding the circular hall were completely empty; besides Erron and the possible corpse rotting itself to oblivion in the most placid way, the West Wing was definitely the closest approximation to a sepia-colored, démodé ghost town the palace had to offer.

"The bandages are merely a charade," the woman explained, trying to see if her revelation could prove useful enough for her husband to pay attention to her, "I'm alright."

"Then why are you still wearing them? They don't look comfortable."

"I've been trying to get to see you for more than a week now, Erron," Zarrabayeusse retorted, visibly offended by Black's lack of sensitivity and nearly childish behavior. "Perhaps if I kept my gauzes and bandages on I could at least engage the guards into finding some… compassion to let me in." She crossed her arms over her chest as a sign of sheer despondence yet her tone had suddenly softened, as if trying to build a brand new bridge between them – one that, hopefully, his own irrepressible instincts wouldn't burn down this time.

"So, you're a liar now," he sat up on the cot, his feet already touching the ground yet eye contact was a luxury he still couldn't afford.

"What can I say, Earthrealmer – I learned from the best."

There was something in the way she had said the word _Earthrealmer_ that made him stand up and walk towards the bars separating them. A certain musicality in the tone, a different color in a voice he knew too well to pretend it didn't carry the power to mesmerize his sullen senses. He stretched his right arm and allowed his digits to finally touch her face – the softness of that skin, and the way she leaned into his touch, nearly instinctively, were still talking about a reciprocity that hadn't been erased by the cruelty of time or the consuming fire of his indifference.

Zarrabayeusse closed her eyes for a moment, briefly surrendering to the sensation of his skin on hers, as her mind struggled to repress all depressing thoughts from the surface of her consciousness. She cocked her head slightly, allowing his warm palm to finally cup her face with a tenderness so ancient it could not be mitigated by the obnoxious mundanity represented by walls or metallic bars. Eyelids fluttered open, slowly and delicately, the emerald of her enamored gaze finally colliding against a brand new landscape: little remained of that man she had seen only nine days ago. His particular style had been replaced by a common off-white tunic. They had even cut his hair: they had shaved his head, only leaving a single stripe of dark blonde hair right in the middle of his head. No mask, no kohl, no hat. She sighed, though completely involuntarily, at the thought of his body. She didn't want her emotions to be mistaken by him: she wasn't offering him her compassion, not even her pity, but that image of his, the unmistakable reflection of a defeated man, was as concerning as it was alarming.

The truth was she had somewhat prepared herself for a new contrasting reality during all those failed attempts to finally get to see him, yet the real image that was being received by her emerald eyes was way rawer, way more disturbing than what she had previously anticipated in her mind. His blunt denial had provided her with enough time to picture him in her head – what he would look like, how he would react to her presence. Reality was colliding against that mental image she had crafted inside her core while still hoping for the best. And the shock of this new actuality felt nearly demolishing for her weakened hopes.

He already looked thinner.

The woman understood that it was too soon, that he could be, indeed, losing weight already but the physical change would have to be more apparent than real. Yet he looked thinner as if his muscles were finally losing all substance. His second abandonment had its consequences: the man she remembered had little to do with the glum, withered version of him she had found behind those bars.

"Oh, but don't worry, it's not so bad," an ironic Black said as quickly as he could, witnessing his wife's face muscles contort in concern and dejection. That tender, softer version of him now buried under a thick layer of pointless pride. He took several steps back rather energetically and took the device resting against the wall and next to his cot. Seemingly deranged eyes approached her once more, his tight grip bringing the formerly obscured object into the dim light enveloping her figure in the corridor, "look,” he said, “they even gave me my own bucket!"

He shook it slightly, stirring the contents inside the dark little basin. The sound of that concentrated liquid moving inside the container was the key to announce her that a mixture of odors was about to find her. The helpless woman embraced her own stomach as if trying to command her intestines not to feel revolted by his moody occurrence.

"Leave me alone," Black sentenced sharply, yet again, as he put the bucket down on the ground.

Still, the woman refused to walk away. The brief gazes they had just shared were still exposing the wall inside those coffee-colored eyes of him; the same impenetrable wall that she had once climbed. Besides getting her knees grazed and her knuckles bruised by his indifference once again, she seemed ready to venture herself, one more time, into his own private prison.

"The most fascinating thing about men like you is that you claim to be lone wolves," she began, her cold stare never leaving his, "men like you; these so-called solitary men… yet the thing is, my dear, men like you are never truly alone." Zarrabayeusse stretched her hands and reached out for him, grabbing his wrists and forcing him closer to the bars. She removed the sleeves of his tunic and inspected his forearms: there were bruises and wounds covering his skin, darkened hematomas underneath his epidermis that were exhibiting shades of purple, green and brown.

He had been beaten.

Not only he had been deprived of his particular, personal style but they had also subjugated his spirits by making him look like a regular prisoner. They had even cut his hair, making him look like a cheap, stigmatized criminal. And they had also beaten him up. He looked away, ashamed, as the woman's strong grip suddenly lightened – the stronghold of her fingers was now a mere caress, impregnating his skin with brand new and balsamic, delicate tenderness.

"You should thank Kotal," Zarrabayeusse whispered, her eyes still unable to look away and leave those colorful bruises decorating his forearms.

"Is it  _Kotal_  now? Just  _Kotal_?" Black raised a seemingly suspicious eyebrow – his states, altered and evolving into a deeper phase of instability now. "Heard you got yourself a brand new pension. Is my money buying you nice things, Zar?"

The woman let go from him as she shook her head, completely unable to believe her ears had listened to the words that had just propelled from his treacherous mouth.

"Not everything is about money," she said, hoping her words hadn't been aimed for deaf ears, "I won't touch your salary, not even a single piece of metal. When you come out from behind these bars you can have every single coin... I never wanted your money back then – and I certainly don't want it now either."

The gunslinger retreated to the darker side of his small cell and sat back down on the cot. He rested his hands on his knees, his shoulders slightly bending over as if giving in.

"You know, Erron – I have always had the same old doubt about you eating away at me: if you've always been a mercenary, driven by greed and ambition…" she braced the bars in front of her, her tone was softer now, as if trying to reach for his most sensitive side, "now that you've lived for so long; now that you've been through so many things – good  _and_  bad, you must already have all the money you ever dreamed of. Why do you keep doing what you do, then? Why do you keep leading this kind of life?"

"Call it greed, thirst for power, too much free time, boredom - you name it."

"Yours is the most complex simplicity I've ever known," she reflected quietly, a timid grin curling up her upper lip, "you could have told me, we could have planned something together. Yet you kept me in the dark like you always did."

Her words caused him to grimace bitterly. He nodded as if acknowledging her point.

"Are you happy now?" Black dared to ask, mockery and defeat were blended into the same expression.

"Far from it. And not only because of the shame I have to endure."

"Shame?" He inquired, the blood in his veins felt warmer somehow, the red in his cheeks was heating up his thoughts.

"Yes, Erron, the shame. Before all this, I was a lackey. Now I'm the wife of a corrupted officer. Somehow slavery sounds like a much better prospect than being married to you."

Black stayed quiet, silence encompassing him now.

She was right, as painful as it was for him to admit – she was right.

"I've been talking to Yvo about your situation," Zarrabayeusse continued rapidly, not really allowing her mind to process or dwell on the true implications and deeper meaning of what she had just said. The honesty of her statement had been brutal; it stung inside, it felt like a knife cutting way too deep, "he's positive there will be a parole option available for you in about five years, maybe a little less than that if we're lucky, or perhaps longer – he didn't know the exact time, but he seemed optimistic,"

The cowboy griped disdainfully.

"Great."

"Five years, Erron, it's not that much, especially for someone like you," his wife was trying to convince him that it wasn't that bad after all, especially considering what had happened to M'horel; such different, irreversible fate could have been Erron's she knew – and he knew that as well, "look at the bright side, they chose not to take into account what happened in the jungle; that's a martial felony, Erron, and you know it."

Yet the insensitive man seemed too absorbed in his own predicament to take the time to actually consider what his wife was saying.

"I still don't understand why the Emperor chose not to mention that during the verdict. They even brought Ferra to confirm the story,” he remembered.

Maybe the Kahn had once more expressed his silent benevolence towards him – or perhaps the Ruler of Outworld had kept that part of the story in the dark on purpose, trying to gain some leverage over him: such an accusation was hard to ignore; it was the kind of evidence that could get him killed. Perhaps Kotal Kahn had an ace up his sleeve and Black, in time, would be turned into nothing but a disposable pawn in his intricate chess of crossed politics. The bittersweet feeling brought him back to his last night as an official enforcer: the Population Census that was about to take place rather sooner than later; Kotal had assigned him to inspect the Lower Terrains. Such a titanic endeavor could mean that he was, in fact, the best at what he did. But it could also mean that perhaps the Kahn wasn't as happy about his job as he thought, and making him face such treacherous, dangerous duty seemed like the perfect opportunity for the emperor to get rid of the problematic cowboy.

"A reconnaissance squad has already been deployed," she informed him, her voice bringing him back to reality – "they will try to recover Kano's body, even after all this time they still believe it may be out there; they are positive the climatic and geographic conditions could have accelerated the state of decomposition of his remains yet they are willing to try to find the body."

" _Kotal_ …" Black vociferated, a vague tone of frustration staining his baritone voice.

"You could have died,"

He knew it for a fact.

Yet his imprisonment felt more like a personal punishment than an actual act of fair social justice being dispensed.

"They contemplated another choice, the Barrister told me. But they had to rule it out," she paused, unsure if she should be revealing such a bitter detail. "Extradition. But since you've been married to me for more years than the amount allowed for a naturalized Outworlder to be sent back to Earthrealm now, extradition was not a viable option… Funny, the one thing that helped you get here in the first place was the same thing that caused you to rot behind these bars. Maybe that's the price for marrying someone in that style; that way – I remember you mentioned its name once to me, a  _green marriage_?" she recalled.

"A green card marriage," Erron corrected her bitterly. Once more, his wife was devastatingly right. He had done everything in his power to get closer to the highest authorities of Outworld. Now, the same extraordinary measures he had chosen to take back in the day were the very same anchors tied to his ankles, forcing him to remain a prisoner in that obscure, depressing dungeon.

" _A green card marriage_ …" Zarrabayeusse repeated, even if only mumbling the words to herself as if trying to apprehend the true meaning behind that foreign definition. "Another thing you should have mentioned is that there was another woman," her tone changed rather abruptly, making her sound like a cold-blooded predator waiting for the right moment to attack a defenseless prey, "I heard about the woman, Erron, this Earthrealmer – the doctor. Is she truly dead?"

She had every right to ask him that, he knew. After all, most of the things he had ever told her had been lies.

He didn't answer – the man simply lowered his head.

"I knew there was another woman, there's  _always_  another woman. You should have told me," she reproached.

"How?" The mercenary exploded suddenly, his senses alarmed, the heat rising inside of him. He jumped off the cot and walked towards the bars, "we hadn't seen each other in years, I didn't even know where you were!"

"You weren't even looking!" Zarrabayeusse yelled back, "you weren't even looking _for me_ ," she reflected; anguish forcing the woman to lower her voice.

"I loved you once, Erron, I deserved to know."

Black pushed his forehead against the bars and closed his eyes, exhaling loudly.

"What did you see in me?" He asked then, all sorts of feelings leaving his mouth; the skin of his temples receiving the cold sensation of metal pressed hard against them - the coward in him was still trying hard to evade eye contact.

"Evergreen – my feelings for you were evergreen," she said, disheartened.

Only then the man longed for her – his eyes inspected and deconstructed that fragile figure standing motionless, right there in front of him yet immensely far from him, inhabiting a forbidden land; the land of the free.

"Her name was Dakota," Black began, a soft chuckle parting his lips.

"What kind of a name is that?" Zarrabayeusse asked, estranged and bewildered, yet the half grin and the bitter smirk adorning her husband's face were quietly speaking about a certain familiarity, even a certain shared affection, perhaps.

"She saved me when the Rebel-Seekers found me. I was hurt and she tended to my wounds but then the tables turned and we both became targets for them - I may be many things, but I am not ungrateful, Zar – at least I have tried my very best not to be ungrateful. I had to help her, just like she had helped me; that's why she was in the cabin – she had nowhere to go, I was only trying to shelter her," he confessed.

"Did you love her?"

"No."

"Erron?"

"No," he repeated, "there was something about her, though… I guess she made me remember, in a way, faces I thought I would never get the chance to see again. She looked just like Amanda, minus the freckles. And she was a doctor, just like Annie," his wife knew both stories; she was no stranger to his own turbulent past, yet those names were still ghosts for her, monumental ghosts she had never had the chance to face.

She had been defeated by their specters long before she had even been given a proper chance to fight her way inside his untamable heart.

That was a pain that still persisted and echoed their silenced voices during the low hours of the nights they spent together. But now, the fierce of their sudden resurgence felt like a bonfire out of her reach and out of control. That stranger that had died in the fire had had the power to merge his past with his present; something she herself had never been able to do. Such obliterating endeavor, now seen through the kaleidoscope of the bitter substance that encompasses time, was making her feel like her torture was never going to end: that man standing right in front of her would never be hers. No matter what, that man standing so close yet so far away had already slipped through her slender fingers long before she had even had a chance to keep him inside the warm nest of her closed fist.

"Tell me  _he_  wasn't in that cabin; tell me  _he_  didn't die in that fire," she pleaded; her voice weak, as if surrendering.

"He wasn't in the cabin," the gunslinger managed to say and that was all she needed – Zarrabayeusse lowered her head and walked away, leaving him alone in his cell; alone to face the same old ghosts that had been summoned by the dead doctor - her tragic transition into the world of everything that is no more now turning her into yet another specter to comfort him during his never-ending nights.


	22. Bird of Prey

_As the Nomad ran his legs off, venturing his tired body into the cruel Atacama Desert, his mind kept on trying to find a proper parallelism between that nightmarish situation he was in and any other he had ever experienced: his memory traveled to very distant eras yet his remembrances couldn't be matched with that particular hell suffocating him. As obnoxious as the idea was, he couldn't remember any other deal going south so badly; any other ordeal going so bad, so fast. Wounded and scarred as he was, the jaded Nomad propelled his system into the seemingly ethereal portal hoping for salvation – sanctuary, that benevolent notion made for battered spirits and laconic existences. "Here goes nothing," the Nomad mumbled to himself as he smashed his very last sand grenade against the ground. Like a magician working his magic, the brown and dusty curtain enveloped his disappearing figure; a handful of dust covering his tracks in the middle of the desert. He chuckled, involuntarily, as his bones were left with no other choice but to embrace the irony he had just crafted._

_One last effort was commanding the impulses running wildly through the avenues of his nerves._

_One huge leap into the thin air would be enough to transport him into the balsamic realm of distance and safety._

_He held on to his talisman, a brown wooden box full of memories from many different lifetimes ago even though every single souvenir from his past was evoking the same old faces and places he had never had the courage to leave behind. One leg, then the other, torso and head followed the motion to create one harmonic jump – dust and sand became the same elemental thing then, confused and blended inside the same chaotic tourbillion. The magician levitated gracefully as his form became blurry; he closed his eyes and hoped for the best until he finally disappeared from this land. It wasn't his first time in Outworld yet, back then, it was nearly impossible for the Nomad to image his stay was meant to be close to permanent. Irises colliding against the auburn horizon of the sunset welcoming his entrance into the wild landscape stretching itself before him, his vision went black as soon as he stepped into the great yellow hills. The stampede had been brutal like a bullet to the head – the Nomad stumbled, confused and overwhelmed; crimson trails sketched by his own blood led his way as they fell from his sweaty forehead to the tip of his battered leather boots. The air got hotter, denser than before: Outworld at last._

_The taste of blood in his gums, strange noises and the tripping, the endless tripping from one body to the other, animalistic sounds of fierce and violence, the oxygen leaving his lungs, the box… the box pressed hard against his chest; that was it, the final blur, the definitive black._ _That was it: the oneiric state in which a body cannot discern dream from reality; life from death._ _That was it, the Nomad thought for the last time as the darkness embraced him completely, wrapping him up in the onyx that defines everything that is unknown._

_That was it._

_Salvation._

* * *

Arc III

Chapter XXII

**Bird of Prey**

**(… And Those we've Left Behind)**

_The Parable of the Nomad_

(1981 - 2001)

* * *

 " _Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground where the light is."_

Haruki Murakami ― 1Q84

* * *

The blacksmith found him only a few hours later. At first, he thought it was a corpse what he was seeing, the herbivorous beasts were playing with the Nomad's unconscious body like it was some kind of morbid toy. He jumped off the seat of his scavenging cart and walked towards the gloomy scene, outstretching his long arms and waving them as menacing wings to try and shoo the animals away. Once the beasts were gone, he finally approached the scene: he stared at the Nomad with eyes full of compassion – his name was Dexitis, ever the good man. The blacksmith carried the broken man all the way back to his cart and, willing to aid the stranger in this peculiar predicament, turned the cart around and went back to his house.

The Nomad woke up four days later, wounded tissue and lacerations were the marks that the transition had chosen to imprint all over his body. The turbulent summer of 1981 seemed to have defused into a deranged vision of a faraway land that was completely out of his reach. As the Nomad sat up in the cot, he inspected the room with eyes that knew what they were longing to find: dilated pupils swam into focus until he found the only thing he really cared about – his talisman had not forsaken him. His box was there, waiting for him right beside the cot and the Nomad exhaled then, relieved to know that those faces and places still belonged with him, the laborious puff of air exiting his mouth was all he needed to reassure himself that he was still alive, that it wasn't a dream.

That was it, after all; salvation.

Two beautiful women stood before him with gauzes and various medical supplies in their hands. "Did you two find me?" He managed to mumble yet they both shook their heads quietly. He certainly wasn't dead, but that celestial sight was the closest approximation to Heaven, he thought. Only a few moments later one of the women dared to approach the stranger and whispered:

"No, we're just taking care of you, tending to your wounds. My husband was the one who found you – in the weathered hills. You need to rest now."

Focusing his vision once again and allowing his head to rest against the pillow they had provided him with, the Nomad quickly realized that both women looked alike – there was only one difference between them that was noticeable at first sight: the woman that had talked to him had different eyes. Her right eye was green as the forest but her left eye was completely white. The other woman, instead, the one that had kept her distance from him, had emerald eyes; a richer green calling him on just like the great wild jungle, so pure and so intense it made the Nomad think that never in his 138 years of existence he had witnessed such a noble color before. Visibly more adventurous than the emerald-eyed one, the first woman placed her gauzes and bandages near the edge of the Nomad's cot and introduced herself to the stranger:

"My name is L'ampaghna. This is my twin sister, Zarrabayeusse. Do you know where you are, can you tell me if you remember your name?"

The Nomad then introduced himself to the woman and explained to her that he knew that he was now in Outworld; that he had intended to go there and that, if his intuition wasn't wrong, he was positive he was in Z'unkahrah. L'ampaghna nodded in silence, satisfied to know that the man was indeed recovering, as she placed both of her hands on his shoulders and slowly began to massage his temples as an attempt to help him relax and sleep.

"He's not from around here," Zarrabayeusse finally whispered, still standing motionless in the center of the room. She was cautious and visibly weary of his presence, yet her tone had been intriguing as if trying to contaminate her sister's bravery with her own doubts and uncertainties. But L'ampaghna didn't care - if anything, she trusted her husband's decisions. That was just one of the many differences between the twin sisters: L'am was the brave one while Zar was usually the one left behind by her own limitations. While L'am would be fearless, reaching out for the stranger in need, Zar would be the one left in the dark, alone and always whispering the same words:

" _He's a bird of prey."_

The Nomad stayed there, with them, until he fully recovered from his wounds and injuries. Two long years had passed, and many things had become crystal clear for him: the portal was gone, there was no going back home for him. His employers must have thought that he had died in that dreadful South American desert since no one had cared enough to reach him – it was obvious, then, that no one was actually looking for him. Alone, and with all the time in the world, the Nomad looked around him and decided it was time he began building bridges towards those around him. The family had not only sheltered him; they had opened their gates for him to make himself comfortable, they had tended to his wounds… They had hidden him from the dangerous outside and from all possible curious outsiders: since he was an Earthrealmer, they knew he was not allowed to stay yet they also knew that he was not ready to leave yet.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the Nomad even had a true friend: Dexitis, the blacksmith who had rescued him, the one responsible for his recovery.

Still, his convoluted senses were about to betray him once again. The corrupted flames of misplaced desires were about to consume the light that the blacksmith had begun to shine down upon him. The son of a coffee-eyed demon and a whore, the Nomad knew his fate had been written long before the world was made. The secret affaire became a sad yet thrilling reality for both the Nomad and the unfaithful L'ampaghna until one day, from her lips drew the words the Nomad had never wished to hear:

"I'm pregnant."

The news was powerful enough to make his bones tremble inside the human vessel that was his body. Then the doubt began to grow stronger: could  _that_  seed be the one that life itself had stolen from him many, many lifetimes ago? Nine long and agonizing months later the woman finally gave birth to a healthy, beautiful boy: Aalem was the name that the blacksmith had chosen for the newborn, a personal homage to his beloved father. Coexisting with the troubled Nomad became nearly impossible back then, the doubts regarding the real father of the child eating away at him slowly and painfully yet alone, in the shadows of the house, Zarrabayeusse's voice could still be heard like a mad whisper anticipating the storm:

" _He's a bird of prey."_

Noticing how the Nomad's attitude had suddenly changed, the blacksmith took him to the Lei Chen Mountains and offered him a piece of land that had belonged in his family for generations – the Nomad accepted the gift acknowledging that getting away from the family was, possibly, the best option he had been left with. He started to build a cabin there; the naked land stretching itself before his coffee eyes becoming his ulterior motive and inspiration. "Here you'll find your peace, and you will satiate the thirst that has awakened your demons," Dexitis told him; his voice trailing off softly in the howling wind of the mountainside.

Alone, and left to his own devices, the nomadic man of the desert dwelling inside of him welcomed the quiet spirit of the lone wolf that recites his inner laments and pains to the moon in the rocky landscape of the mountains.

Six years later, the blacksmith finally went back to the Lei Chen Mountains and gently knocked on his door. At first, the Nomad hesitated: L'ampaghna's visage lingering in front of his eyes as if reminding him once more the kind of man that he was.

"I need a favor," said Dexitis.

No more the blacksmith but the political activist, Dexitis told him a story: there was a storm about to drown the city – they wanted to break Mileena's rule from the inside. The nomad cupped his chin with his own hand as he thought about the words he had just heard: he was a mercenary, not a politician, yet all those years he had seemingly spent alone in that cabin were slowly piling up upon his shoulders – he needed purpose, a job, money; the fuel for a greedy, ambitious soul. He stared at the blacksmith in silence: he had always considered politics to be a game of chess played by someone else. Still, the need encysted deep in that man's eyes and his own guilt waking up after six years of solitude were powerful magnets attracting him irrevocably.

The Nomad came back to Z'unkahrah with Dexitis – back to the family, and back to the dangers that had always coexisted with his lifestyle. He began to walk the stealthy and treacherous path of infiltrating Mileena's lines until he met a rather peculiar woman: Tanya, an Edenian that had aligned herself with the Kahnum seeking the restoration of her beloved land. In her eyes, the man seemed capable, willing and able. He had even provided her with valuable information about Mileena's opposition until one day, the Nomad finally demanded to meet the highest authority of Outworld – he was only giving them mere crumbs but Dexitis' plan was about to fall to pieces if he failed to get closer to Mileena.

"You seem trustworthy enough, but what are your credentials?" Tanya asked him, "you're an Earthrealmer, but that's not something that can help you. If anything, that would be perceived as a weakness. You said it was Shang Tsung the one who  _improved_  you…yet that treacherous name won't get you very far either," she explained.

"What can I do, then?" the Nomad dared to ask, already disheartened.

"Truth is we could use someone like you, but you'll never get anywhere near Mileena with those credentials, not even if  _I_  were to be the one willing to introduce you. But if you were an Outworlder… things might be different for you."

"You know that's impossible," the Nomad asserted.

"Not entirely true," Tanya began to explain, her sultry tone leading the way. "You can  _become_  an Outworlder, a naturalized one. That could work." She placed her hands on the Nomad's shoulders, a sinful smile taking over her face: "All you have to do is marry one."

He went back to the house feeling discouraged and nearly helpless. He explained everything that had happened to the blacksmith, who, far from considering Tanya's words as a limitation, had lucidity and perspective enough to see the predicament as a brand new possibility.

"I can offer you a wife," he said, "Zarrabayeusse."

The Nomad felt as if every single bone in what used to be the solid foundation of his body had suddenly begun to succumb to an advanced state of petrification: she, the woman whose words had defined him as a bird of prey; she, the twin sister of the woman he had slept with – the boy's aunt. No. He couldn't bring himself to envision her as his wife, as his companion or his partner; even as beautiful as she was.

"No one will ever marry her," the blacksmith went on as a calculative smile began to reveal the plot behind his explanations. "She's sterile, she cannot give birth. Yet, no one has to know about this and, if no one knows, we won't raise any suspicions."

"A green card marriage…" the Nomad whispered, contemplating the entirety of the proposal.

"If you marry her, you’d be eligible for enforcing," Dexitis said as he ran off quickly, getting lost behind his bedroom door. He emerged from his chamber a few moments later, a book resting against his hands. When he opened it, the Nomad saw a stencil-like stamp of a face that seemed familiar.

"This is the great Osh-Tekk warrior that will rule Outworld one day – and when that happens, you and I will be there by his side," the Nomad stared at the image with eyes full of reflection; he had seen that face before, back in Earthrealm at first and then, many years prior to the incident in Chile, during the time when the Nomad had served the former Kahn as a liaison of sorts between realms, smuggling weaponry and acting as an information broker. But now the man had changed - he was different, already embellished by the distinctive charms of imminent power. "If you marry Zar you will get close to Mileena; you and I – we can tear apart her rule from the inside. Then he will come; his rule will set us all free. You will have a job again; a proper employer. Purpose, my friend - the very thing that has always defined you, the very thing that you've been lacking ever since I found you."

"But I… I don't love her," the Nomad mumbled – he had only considered marriage once, love had indeed played such a big part back then, many lifetimes ago, and it hadn't ended well. "And I'm sure as hell she won't like the idea either."

"She'll understand. What  _you_  have to understand is that this is a permanent decision: you will be a naturalized Outworlder. That means you'll have rights but annulment is not going to be one of them. A small sacrifice is all that's separating you from everything you've ever wanted."

The Nomad stood in complete silence for a moment; many concepts and ideas were running wildly through his numbed mind yet the proposal somehow began to seem reasonable enough: not only for their political plans but also, as a way for him to give something back to the family that had sheltered him. Even Zarrabayeusse would benefit from their union: it would be a loveless marriage indeed, but at least she would be safe from words such as 'pariah' or 'incomplete'.  _A small sacrifice…_  He shook the blacksmith's hand, determination started to show as the Nomad embraced his fate.

"Deal."

Zarrabayeusse complained about the arrangement for as long as she could but the woman gave in eventually; her personal predicament becoming reason enough for the woman to accept whatever shards of a proper life they were willing to throw her way. They got married in a small ceremony with the blacksmith and his wife as the only witnesses. Then they went back to the house, the wedding had only been an errand they had been forced to run. They put the certificate of marriage inside one of the books displayed on the many shelves of the blacksmith's personal library and went on with their lives as if nothing had changed.

Still, in the dead of night, the woman would whisper:  _"he's a bird of prey."_

It took him four years, but one day it was finally time for the Nomad to meet Mileena.

Four years of plotting and perfecting the plan were about to meet the exultant path of conclusion.

There she was, standing right in front of him, her suspicious grin welcoming the treacherous Nomad. Tanya was also there, motionless by his side – it was her cadence the one that eventually ventured the room and introduced the man. The Nomad shook the ruler's hand and he explained that he had crossed paths with a traitor, a political activist seeking rebellion: a blacksmith known as Dexitis the Instigator. Infuriated, Mileena ordered her enforcers to capture the blacksmith – the group was guided by the Nomad himself, claiming to know the exact location where they could find Dexitis. But when they arrived at the place the only welcome they received were axes, torches and nearly medieval weaponry slaughtering Mileena's lines. They had been ambushed; the Nomad was responsible for such obscure maneuver. That was the first crack in the Kahnum's structure: a rule that was soon to be erased by oblivion and by the firm hand of a new leader. The news of such a triumphant attack quickly reached the Osh-Tekk's ears; the future emperor summoned both the Nomad and the blacksmith longing to meet the ones behind such Machiavellian move.

Truth was, Tanya had revealed so many secrets by then that the Nomad, facing a more-than-suitable employer, understood that it was time for the mercenary to finally take over. Leverage, he had learned long ago, was more valuable than any currency – especially when his pockets were empty.

"How do I know you won't betray me, just like you betrayed Mileena?" The Osh-Tekk asked, amused yet cautious.

"You don't," the blacksmith took the lead, "but I can assure, my Lord: everything we've done, we've done it for you."

Empowered, and determined by purpose, the Nomad remained by the Osh-Tekk's side. His wait eventually proved useful: the war was finally over; his employer was now the Kahn of Outworld. Now a naturalized official enforcer by Royal Decree, the Nomad moved to the Palace, taking the blacksmith with him. Their lives had changed; the progress they had been waiting for was finally there, within their reach – his life was resuming its natural course, his wife and his empty marriage were completely useless now - even if he was still chained to her by a forgotten piece of paper, he was free again to finally be the man he had always been.

The blacksmith and the renewed Nomad worked together, side by side, for four more years until fate decided it was time for the devil to show his tail. His longevity was about to teach him an important lesson: history  _always_  repeats itself.

He had been patrolling the city all morning, his legs wandering those dusty streets pursuing a missing destination – the blacksmith's house, only a few steps away from his tired feet, seemed as evocative as it looked tempting. He knocked on the door only to find L'am waiting on the other side. The Nomad walked in, cautious yet clouded by a mystified feeling he couldn't quite place.

He knew the blacksmith was at the Palace.

"The boy? Your sister?" He asked her, even then he would never refer to Zar as his own wife.

"Gone shopping."

Sure, he realized, their lifestyle had changed now that they were being paid good money by the generous emperor. There were plenty of luxuries they were able to afford; capricious and whimsical as the very concept of economy.

They hadn't been alone in a very long time – before the boy; before the doubt. But now the doubt was gone: Aalem looked more and more like the blacksmith as years went by. The fire, the hunger - ethereal elements colliding against the sacred barriers they were willing to cross. They knew they weren't supposed to; he was a married man now and she had become a mother. He was family now, he belonged with her twin sister even if that marriage was nothing but an empty pantomime.

Maybe it was because the very root that should have grown under the solid foundation of the term  _family_  had been crooked inside of him: his original family, a conglomerate of fake bonds and unclear bindings. Loyalties intertwined with deeper, richer feelings that had nothing to do with the reciprocal notion of sharing the same bloodlines.

_Flesh of their flesh, sin of their sins._

Jessica was his aunt, or so they said – yet it never mattered in the slightest, it had never been reason enough to stop them.

L'ampaghna was his sister in law. What difference did it make, really?

As they embraced desire the devilish tail of temptation brushed softly against their skins. The blacksmith stood immobile a few steps away from them, his incredulous eyes were unable to look away. He grabbed the Nomad by the hair and tossed him away from his wife as if he was an object; an undesirable, repulsive object that had ruined his life. As his body landed against a wall, the Nomad witnessed his troubled friend – his trembling hand was airborne, the uncontainable spasms of his fury directing his digits downwards. He slapped his own wife in the face as his mouth began vociferating all kinds of insults and the woman cried out as her eyes got filled with tears. She tried to cover her naked body with her arms, but his grip was too strong. Soon his hand became a fist, the cascade of punches emanated from his arm like a possessed, deranged element of torture wielded by a blinded executioner.

_Déjà vu._

The memory of his last day with Jessica quickly began to torment the Nomad. He had already lived through that moment and now he was being forced to relive that exact same instant - only now he had to choose. Way back then he had been nothing but a frightened boy, now he was a grown-up man, a very capable, determined man. With his back still pressed hard against the wall, the Nomad made up his mind: he would never be that frightened child again.

He moved quickly, grabbed one of his guns from their holsters and shot his best friend. The bullet hit him right between the eyes, exiting his skull in only a fraction of a second. The Nomad then rushed his way towards the horrified woman: he tried to hold her, to cover her with his own clothes – yet she was already gone; a part of her already damaged, already broken beyond repair.

" _He's a bird of prey,"_ Zar had warned them.

They made a pact: no one was ever going to know the truth behind Dexitis' sudden demise.

The Nomad went back to the Palace and tried his best to go on with his life but the guilt brewing inside of him was nearly unbearable. Driven by torment, he started to walk the stormy road of grief, visiting the broken family every now and then, trying to make sure they were alright. The boy was just a boy back then – yet the mother, the treacherous L'ampaghna, was headed towards the dancing flames of her own sin.

It took her only a few months, she stood on the chair – the rope brushing against her slender neck.

The Nomad and his phantasmagorical wife took care of the boy - he even found himself dividing his time between the Palace and the house. They became an ensemble family, but they were a family nonetheless. Yet, in the back of his mind, he would die inside each time the boy would call him  _uncle Erron_.

It took time but, in the end, he had successfully indoctrinated the kid, nearly forcing him to call him  _Mr. Black_  instead.

 _Mr. Black_ , he would say, the cold command contaminating the boy's elocution to finally reverberate like a mechanical response forever detached of all feelings yet intrinsically speaking of an indissoluble bond.

The united family charade was brief though; it lasted for less than two years. Trapped, and feeling like a caged animal subjugated by the discord carried by mundanity and the turmoil of having succumbed to the unwanted endeavors of a domesticated spirit, the Nomad understood it was time for things to go back to normal.

He took the boy with him and went back to the Palace: the mercenary taking over, once more, corroded by the renewed call of greed and power. She pleaded, on her knees: she wanted the boy, she saw no reason for the cold-hearted Nomad to take him away from her. She was the only real relative left for the boy to hold on to, she argued – yet her words could never melt the ice wall the Nomad had built up. He  _was_  a bird of prey and he had taken it all away from her, he had stolen everyone that she had once held dear, he had corrupted them; he had poisoned them all with his unruly, devilish ways.

"Take me with you," the woman cried out yet deep inside she already knew the answer. He had never included her in his plans before, why start now? Afraid of what they all might say about him, a man who had censured his own manhood by marrying a sterile woman while following the wild songs of greed and power. The dishonor. The graceless truth of an unscrupulous soul.

He left her behind with no regrets in the calm horizon of certainty, only it was too late: the colors she had seen had been way too rich, just way too powerful to be ignored. She was already in love with the bird of prey.

The boy stayed with him for thirteen years; the memory of his aunt fading in the wind with each passing day. Until one morning, the Nomad realized that growing up inside the secluded walls of the Palace was not meant for a gentle soul like Aalem's. All he did, in the retrospective image of his own failure, was to set him free from one crystal box just to put him in yet another one: a smaller, more isolated one - his cabin. Feeling guilty for pushing the boy away, the Nomad even gave him a false purpose, making him believe in a fairy tale made by smoke and mirrors. The boy - the true, silent victim of all the Nomad’s mistakes was the only one paying the price: the illusion had backfired; the cabin's walls, closing in on him, had murdered his young spirit.

* * *

_"How long has it been, Erron?"_

_"Since what exactly? Since we met or since we last saw each other?" The mercenary asked patiently as he turned to his side to look her in the eye. Those emerald eyes of hers were powerful magnets, forcing him to stare indefinitely into their quiet depths._

_"Since you ruined my sister's marriage by killing her husband," Zarrabayeusse stated with remarkable simplicity and indifference._

_"You sister was already dead," the cowboy challenged her._

_"Was she now?"_

_"Thirty-five years, Zar. It's been thirty-five years." Black confessed._

Alone in his cell, the Nomad relived their unexpected encounter with bitter eyes about to rain: it had been thirty-five years indeed, but not since he had killed the blacksmith. It had been thirty-five years since Dexitis had found him. He knew, there was not a single trace of doubt inside his mind: that first day he had already ruined their lives, corrupting them slowly with his venomous existence.

He turned around in his cold cot, praying for sleep to come. Yet, forbidden, her lulling voice kept brushing his ears, summoning the unwanted hurricane of sudden introspection.

" _Is she truly dead?"_

He flinched, the memory too painful to go on.

" _Tell me he didn't die in that cabin."_

There were things he could never tell her now – many terrifying truths he was not willing to expose her to. He knew she wasn't ready. She would never be ready. Even after every single atrocity that he had done to her, she was persistent: she had become the only constant in his life. He had always taken her for granted yet there she was, merging her bones in the indissoluble substance of time; eternal and irreproachable. No, he could never tell her the truth about the boy – the truth was his personal punishment, a monster he couldn't even bring himself to face.

Being with her and being without her had become equally torturing situations.

The soulless Nomad covered his face with his calloused hands. The darkness; the uncertain cover of night trying to suffocate the true nature of his essence.

She had been right - every single time those words had propelled from her mind she had been right.

He was a bird of prey. And he had left them all behind. All of them.

But her.


	23. The Bottom of the Blackest Tongues

Arc III

Chapter XXIII

**The Bottom of the Blackest Tongues**

* * *

 " _Your green eye is a reducing chamber. If I look into it long enough, I will become as small as my own reflection; I will diminish to a point and vanish. I will be drawn down into that black whirlpool and be consumed by you. I shall become so small you can keep me in one of your osier cages and mock my loss of liberty."_

Angela Carter ―The Erl-King

* * *

_[Three months later]_

With all the things she could have done now that she had his money and all the time in the world to spend it, the woman had settled for a much more primitive task: she had crafted a ritual. The intimate atmosphere of the recondite, dark redoubt where her husband was being kept had helped her yet, deep down, they both knew that it was her tenacity the one true element that would never be ready to give up on him.

Like everything that had ever encountered him, he knew it wasn't volitional. There was meaning to it, an intention. Or maybe even more than one: in the panoptic view of her colorful palette, the gunslinger could choose a different reason for her to be there every night – she didn't want to be alone, she didn't want him to be alone, she didn't want him to feel like an outcast desecrated by the society he had tried to protect, or maybe she didn't want him to feel guilty, perhaps she wanted to make sure he was alright.

Maybe she wanted to collect all of his states – now that they had caged the beast it was finally easy to document every change in his personality from a simple awkwardness to an intricate pattern of instability.

"I wish they had given you a more talkative neighbor," she said, carefree, as she began handing him all the contents on her tray. First, the glass of water, then, the two small metallic containers: one with his dinner, the other with the subsequent dessert. Since they would never allow for his gate to be opened, they would be forced to maneuver every night in order to get everything to get to the other side of the bars. The ritual, simple enough, would not only force him to get to see her every night: the woman would at least make sure that he would finish his dinner, only allowing herself to leave once the containers were empty.

"I know," Black chuckled, his hands already getting busy. "We talk from time to time, the usual… The weather, sports, but he's more of a listener."

The corpse rotting away in the other cell was Black's only companion during the day. Besides the occasional guard checking in on him every once in a while trying to justify their salary and his wife bringing him dinner every night, he would spend most of his time in complete isolation. This wasn't the first time he had been imprisoned, the brand on his shoulder would forever talk about a faraway past, a past when he had known the dark paths of jail and punishment, the symbol accompanying him, defining him for having served the wrong side of history, yet this new-found loneliness was beginning to get to him.

"You can't even smell it anymore, can you?" The woman inquired, as she raised an eyebrow.

"What? Henry?"

With the greenish skin of his face finally giving in to time,  _Henry's_  cheekbones were slowly starting to sink in, producing incipient holes and concavities where there should have been muscle and a solid osseous structure.

"Oh, so you even gave him a name," she said as she sat down on the floor, cross-legged right in front of his cell.

"You look tired," the gunslinger said between mouthfuls.

"I am," she said, cautious at first then slowly regaining some self-confidence. "I have a job now – the Kahn offered me a position."

Black's cold gaze met hers almost instantaneously, the spoon hovering mid-air in front of his half-opened mouth.

"I can't wander around the Palace all day waiting for the night to come, Erron, and you know it," she retorted, trying to justify her decision.

"I don't remember you doing much – ever," he began, his tone was honest. "I mean no offense, Zar, but you… you having a job, earning your money, being an independent woman… I'm sorry but I just don't see it." He laughed, the intrepid sounds ricocheting through the empty cells. She stared at him - her mouth agape, not really sure of what she could say. She was no stranger to his chauvinism yet it hurt her all the same. To know that her own husband saw her as nothing but a decorative piece in his life was degrading, to say the least.

"You have my money, Zar, and all the time in the world. You are bored? The days are long without me there? I get it, just find something to do, a hobby, I don't know, what about gardening? The Palace is big, Zar, I'm sure you'll find something to do."

She swallowed, trying to remain calm and avoid confrontation.

"I told you I won't touch your money, I can make my own." Her voice was colder now, as if offended by his lack of sensitivity. "How do you think I survived all those years alone?" The memory of his abandonment, ever painful and certain, and the struggle of all those years alone and completely forgotten had never truly forsaken her. If anything, he had been the one responsible for this new hunger she had encountered, the need to go on against all odds, the certainty that if she was to survive, if she was to save herself, it was only up to her.

"I'm just saying – it's not your fault that I'm here," Black said, trying hard not to dwell on the possible prospects of her lonely years. "If you need money, use mine. The Palace is big enough for you to find something to do; without the pressures of a job, that is."

"The Palace…" She rolled her eyes, ready to strike.

"I'm not implying that you're incapable," Black retorted.

"The Palace… you don't even know how much I hate  _the Palace_. You may see this place as the epitome of power but all I see is the fake idol that took everything and everyone away from me. This place consumed Dexitis, it lured my sister into a life of pleasures and money – it drove you away from me," the distance in her eyes was replicating each one of the painful memories of those distant, decadent days. "I always knew your soul was meant to succumb to greed, but I could have never suspected you would leave me behind so easily."

"I was never yours, to begin with." He spat disdainfully, tossing the food aside. "You warned them about me,  _he's a bird of prey_  you said. Yet you fell for this bird of prey, it wasn't something that I did on purpose – you knew what you were signing up for, no one lied to you, you knew our marriage wasn't real."

She stood up and turned around, she had heard more than enough. She knew there were days when his captivity would get to him, making him insufferable and mean but that didn't mean he had the right to hurt her. She reconsidered her chances now that it was her turn to strike back: no, she wouldn't leave so soon, she wouldn’t go without putting up a good fight.

She took a step forwards and faced him.

"Yvo needs a new Scrivener. Just so you know, that's the position the Kahn offered me," now it was Black's turn to stare at her speechless. "I would consider  _gardening_ , you see, but I think it would be far more interesting to spend my days sitting right next to the only man besides Kotal himself that is powerful enough to release you from this cell."

He had taken her for granted once more. As years went by, taking her for granted had become more of a common sport to him than an actual, real attitude towards his wife.

"A Scrivener sounds like a much better job than the one your sister and her husband had planned for you," Black retorted, stubborn as ever, his machoism blinding him from the obvious truth: Zarrabayeusse had finally gotten the upper-hand.

"Don't mention them – you don't get to mention them after all you did to us. L'am and Dex were good people until you corrupted them,” she said; suddenly eye-contact was simply out of the question.

" _L'am and Dex_ ,  _L'am and Dex_..." his tone was mocking her genuine love for the ones she had lost. "L'am and Dex saw you as an expense, woman, open your eyes. They let you stay with them because they knew no one was ever gonna marry you. You didn't work; you and your sister had both your heads in the clouds believing in all those Edenian fairy tales about princesses and fancy dresses and luxuries you knew you could never afford, you didn't have any friends, you would never leave the house, you were never going to find any suitors – and you were never going to leave," he explained coldly – all the bitter words that had propelled from his treacherous, poisonous mouth were finally shaping those ideas she had had in her mind all along: that her own family pitied her, that she was perceived as a burden they couldn't get rid of. "There was a point when they even considered handing you over to the House of Pleasure – you should thank me for saving you from such undesirable fate, Zar – it was  _me_  the one who saved  _you_ ; not the other way around. I saved you when I said ' _Yes, I'll marry her'_ , remember?"

"How dare you?" Her grip tight against the bars, her jawline rigid. Those emerald eyes deconstructing him were ready to become darts and penetrate his imperturbable skin.

"What's a whore's biggest fear, my lovely?" The gunslinger demanded, a half-grin adorning his naked visage. "Come on, humor me," he instigated.

"Getting sick," Zarrabayeusse said, sighing uncomfortably at the question.

"Getting pregnant. But that has never been a problem for you, see what I mean?"

"You are lucky these filthy bars are separating us."

Her hands were now tight fists lingering before him – such fury in her eyes, that fire: he knew better than to provoke her with the painful imagery of a time that didn't exist anymore. But as Black and his wife stared at each other defiantly, they were interrupted by the echo of a distant sound – a sound strong enough to penetrate the Palace walls and travel all the way down to the pavilion. Their shared gazes spoke about an alarming uncertainty as the ground began to shake; it only lasted for a couple of seconds yet it had been powerful enough to startle them, their arms and hands trying to hold on to the bars.

"Are you alright?" Black asked once the tremor was over and the woman nodded in silence, reaching for him at the other side of the bars."What was that?" He mumbled, his fingertips caressing her hands.

"Another incident, I guess," Zarrabayeusse told him, already feeling disheartened. "It started several days ago; minor incidents all across the city: the remnants of the Rebel-Seekers initiative. They… they have been expressing their discomfort towards the Emperor's decision," she explained.

"By these  _minor_  incidents, what do you mean?" He squeezed her hand.

"Sporadic attacks all over the city. Reptile is the one in charge of the raids; he says there's nothing to fear, says they got it under control. Yet this was… I wouldn't call this a minor incident."

"That didn't sound like something that's under control to me."

"That's why Yvo needs a new Scrivener – the attacks are getting bigger, and louder. So many people are entering the Palace prison every day that the barristers are having a hard time trying to keep up with all the paperwork."

There was a shared moment of silence; a much-needed truce for both of them. Only a few moments later the woman spoke again, their hands still intertwined in a warm gesture of company.

"Erron… please be sensible and tell me where Aalem is, it's not safe out there," she pleaded, "you promised me when you took him with you, you would take care of him – so please take care of him now: tell me where he is."

"I don't know where he is, Zar. He left."

"You cannot  _not_  know; that boy is your shadow." She demanded.

"He's not a  _boy_. That's your problem, you still think of him as a little boy but for fuck's sake, woman, he's thirty-three," Black yelled as he finally let go from her hands. "It's always  _about the boy_ ,  _about the boy_  – you sound like a broken record, Zar. And it's not like this interest makes you aunt of the year, either. You knew he was living in the Palace with me but you never came to visit. You knew he was staying in the cabin but I didn't see you there either; do you want me to go on?"

"You took him under  _your_  wing, you molded him, and now you expect me to believe that you simply don't know where he is?" Zarrabayeusse yelled back, the truce between them had officially ceased to exist.

"People change."

"I want to protect him, Erron – and not just from the bombs outside. I want to see how much of him can still be saved after being corrupted by you and your ways for so long. I don't want him to become  _you_ ," the woman confessed. He handed her the containers and the glass and retreated to his cot – he couldn't face her anymore; couldn't find the courage to tell her the truth about Aalem. As twisted as their bond was, there still was a part of him willing to protect her.

"When my sister and I were but little children, our parents used to take us to the beach every year during the golden season back in Edenia," she began, her voice soft and quiet as she welcomed the treasured memories. "We spent a lot of time there; I got to know the people and the place like the back of my hand. But ever since I was a child, I've always had the same dream: I see myself walking on that golden sand, I am back on that beach again, or at least I feel it's that beach I used to know. The sea looks calm but as I keep on walking towards the shore I realize it's far from calm. There is some sort of a restaurant near the water; people are seated by different tables, the water brushes their ankles: they don't talk to each other – they don't even look at each other. I see pilings in the water; the place is but a dreadful desert, rocky and greyish, and the sea becomes a tempest that cannot be contained. There's always a detail that catches my attention: it's never sunny there. There are ruins at both sides of the restaurant; ruins that remind me of some distant funerary ritual – perhaps they are the remnants of some old cemetery surrounded by water. The image is truly terrifying but it somehow soothes me, as if that version of the place I knew was home to me," she placed the tray on the ground and leaned her head against the bars. "I know that place from my dreams does not exist. But if I ever was to go back to Edenia, I know I would go look for it anyway. I am positive I would search for that version of that place even if I knew I could never find it because it simply does not exist. But lately my dream has changed: I cannot find that place anymore. I manage to reach the beach but I cannot find that specific spot and when I ask for directions it's like no one in my dream knows what I'm talking about. That's how I feel every time I try to tell them that you're a good man: they look at me as if they didn't know what I was talking about. Every night, when I come here, I try to reach out and find that good man even if deep down I know he might not exist at all – but lately I haven't been able to find him."

"I thought you only saw me like a bird of prey," Black mumbled, still captivated by her story.

"I did, for the longest of times. But those years we got to spend together as husband and wife with the boy… I don't care if our family was nothing but an elaborate lie – I saw  _you_ ; and I saw  _him_ , the good man that seems to be out of reach now. I know he's still in there, Erron. I know time it's taking its toll on you but I refuse to believe they're right; I refuse to believe it when they say this cell is going to make you lose your mind."

She caressed the bars and looked down before reaching for the tray once more.

"Goodnight, Erron," she whispered as she left.

"You didn't say goodnight to  _Henry_ ," the gunslinger mumbled, a new sense of sadness taking over his baritone voice.

If there had always been one thing balancing the scales of his sanity, that one thing had been his longevity. The same element punishing him, detaching him from the inherent candor of mankind by forcing him to witness the death of those around him was the anchor keeping him afloat. Every time life would slap him in the face, there would always be a subsequent long gap of time for him to recover. Of course, some blows had been really hard to take yet time had always been his ally, helping him recover from the pain and the sorrow that had always chased after him, ever since he was nothing but a helpless child.

The vision of a cold mercenary had played its part as well. He never doubted what he wanted in life, there had never been a single moment of hesitation for him. Such clear goals had been his anchors all along, giving him purpose, giving him a horizon for his tired bones to walk towards to.

Yet his last months had been a never-ending nightmare: Aalem was dead, there was not a single certainty about the missing doctor, his wife had reappeared after a long time and now he was in prison, deprived of everything that had been constitutive to the man that he was. Ten years were more than enough for him to recover, that much was true. But ten years isolated from the world were still ten years of solitude. Ten years without his goals, ten years without a purpose. Even for a man like him, ten years were a slow punishment, one that would leave him breathless in the dark corners of his cell, wasting away while talking to a dead companion.

He turned around, his back resting against the cold structure of the cot, his hands on his stomach.

"Goodnight,  _Henry_."


	24. Night of Desirable Objects

Arc III

Chapter XXIV

**Night of Desirable Objects**

* * *

  _"His touch both consoles and devastates me; I feel my heart pulse, then wither, naked as a stone on the roaring mattress while the lovely, moony night slides through the window to dapple the flanks of this innocent who makes cages to keep the sweet birds in. Eat me, drink me; thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden, I go back and back to him to have his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water, this garment that drenches me, its slithering odour, its capacity for drowning."_

Angela Carter — The Erl-King

* * *

_[Six weeks later]_

"You look tired, my dear. Why don't you head back home?"

The woman stared at the window in silence; nights in Z'unkahrah were usually quiet but the last few nights had been quieter than ever. The contrast was welcomed, though. The attacks that had successfully frightened the citizens had not only brought debris as they destroyed most of the buildings: they had also brought despair, and a multitude of echoes whispering around every corner. The Capitol was not a safe haven anymore, peace had been brief. But even though the words  _civil war_  had begun resounding inside everyone's heads, the tranquility of those nights of terror was appreciated all the same, even if they all knew such calmness was nothing but a truncated panacea.

The screams; the high-pitched cries for help. The red that had painted the streets.

And now the silence.

Yvo placed a hand on one of her shoulders as he leaned closer and repeated his words: "Zar… You can go back home if you're tired." Only then, when summoned by the warmth of physical contact, Zarrabayeusse looked at the Palace Barrister. She moved her hand slowly, as if dismissing his suggestion – the files were piling up upon her desk, the paper tower of precious information was speaking of a certain urgency, of a task that needed to be completed as soon as possible.

"I can assure you – all those papers will still be here in the morning," he grinned softly as her, "you haven't slept in what? Three days? Four days? I lost count already, dear."

"Four days," she said timidly yet her hands were already busy picking up a random file from the pile growing unceasingly before her. She opened it quickly, and her eyes tried to read the words that had been written on the paper but her vision was blurry; the lines confused and intertwined before her emerald eyes. She sighed, throwing the file back on top of the pile. "Maybe you're right, maybe I should get some rest," the woman acknowledged, feeling her shoulders heavy and her neck about to succumb.

Yvo nodded in silence as he watched her stand up, grab her black pashmina and her handbag. Her scratchpad pressed hard against her chest and her skirt already dancing around her ankles.

"Do you need an escort?" The barrister offered, knowing that even though the path separating their office from the Palace was a short one, it was late for a woman to walk alone through the empty streets, especially during such difficult times.

"No, I'm fine," she said as she brushed his shoulder lightly: Yvo was a nice man, he wasn’t just a capable, fair boss. Maybe there still was some pity encysted deep inside his eyes, perceiving her as an incomplete, lesser being – yet the man had helped  _them_  enough; had helped  _her_  enough, convincing the Kahn that hiring her was a good idea. She kissed him softly on the cheek and then closed the door behind her, the ulterior need to rest her head against her pillow was the only impulse driving her through the night.

The path was indeed short yet the sights weren't easy to see. People had begun acting overcautiously, many of them had decided to barricade their houses as an attempt to stop criminals from getting inside – as it always happened during chaotic times, delinquents of all sorts would always try to take advantage of the situation, picking on the weaker ones while hiding inside the tourbillion of terror engulfing the city.

Crimson stains were still polluting countless walls and monuments – the fallen ones imprinting the testimonies of their final fates, altering the landscape and reminding everyone of the ghosts of those cruel, distant times when war was the only form of life they knew how to live. Yellow candles, scattered here and there, were adorning the streets as silent tributes to those souls still waiting - and the silence, the unbearable silence, getting dangerously far from the tender embrace of the quiet night and painfully closer to the very notion of fear.

Her body became a diminutive the second she walked through the large Palace gates – quietness had also reached the epicenter of the city, darkness embracing every corridor and every corner. As tired as she was, her body was still demanding yet another effort from her - not only she hadn't been able to sleep in four days: she hadn't had any time left to see  _him_  in four days. The image of  _Henry_  assaulted her mind mercilessly: a rotting corpse, forgotten and completely abandoned, slowly kissing away his skin, his very form and shape. She shook her head as her tight fists collapsed against the impervious empty space around her waist. Instead of going to her bedchamber, the woman turned around and went to the Palace kitchen. The place was deserted, not even a single cook or maid could be found in there. Not only it was late; it was inconveniently late: all activity for the day had already ended but it would still take a few more hours for all tasks to be resumed. Trapped inside that useless limbo of dead hours, Zarrabayeusse picked a silver-colored tray from the nearest counter and grabbed the only food she was able to find: two slices of bread, surely discarded from someone else's dinner and a half-empty bottle of red wine.

She walked through the dimly-lit corridors alone, balancing the tray, her scratchpad and her handbag with the little energy left inside her jaded system. The air grew significantly colder as she ventured herself down the rocky alleyways of the dungeon, the silence growing thicker as well, becoming a deafening echo only corrupted by the only guard sitting by the old and rusted West Wing gate; the very last gate separating her from the Maximum Security Pavilion.

Sitting on the floor with his legs flexed against his chest, his arms resting on his knees and his head using his own forearms as an improvised pillow, the guard's loud snoring was enough for the woman to understand that she was late. Unable to use her hands, Zarrabayeusse kicked the guard slightly with the tip of her shoe, earning a soft grunt in response. The man's eyes gradually swam into focus and he cocked his head slightly, as if refusing to wake up.

"Visit hours are over," he mumbled ungracefully.

"I know," the woman replied, "I was busy working at the Barristers' Office; I was hoping you could make an exception."

"No except…" The dark orbs around her eyes were subtly letting him know that she hadn't slept in days – her body, visibly tired and about to crumble down, was balancing clothes, personal belongings and a tray with food for  _him_. "You must really care about that bastard," the guard found himself thinking out loud. He stood up between unintelligible complaints and finally opened the gate. The woman nodded her silent appreciation as her feet started to march down the last section of the prison. His voice in the distance, the alarming claims of someone in need, welcomed her even before she had had a proper chance to stand before him.

" _Someone out there?"_

She rushed her way through the corridors, his plea guiding her steps: something wasn't right, he wasn't right.

" _Anyone?"_

Nearly running now, the woman finally reached the last pavilion. She placed the tray on the ground and lighted one of the torches placed by the wall behind her – he flinched as the yellowish light hit his eyes and his hands quickly covered his face, allowing the shadows to mitigate the blinding effect. Only then she understood what was going on: she hadn't seen him in four days; he hadn't eaten in four days, he hadn't even seen the light in four days.

She looked over her shoulder only to find  _Henry_  resting peacefully on his cot: "So that's what happened to you," she whispered, brokenhearted, "nobody cared."

She turned her attention back to Erron: the woman got on her knees and handed him the bread and the wine – the starving gunslinger nearly snatched everything from her hands as soon as his eyes saw the forms of substance his body was lacking. The truth hit her then: Erron's wellbeing was completely up to her now. It was bad enough that she was only bringing him dinner every day – such a strong, well-built body like his needed much more than that, no wonder she had thought that he had already looked thinner only a few days after his imprisonment. One day without her was a day without food, a day without water, a day without light.

"What happened to you?" Black asked between mouthfuls, his tone was reproachful, "you kept me waiting for four days."

"Erron, I had no clue," she cried out, her arms reaching out through the bars for her hands to caress his head. "Why didn't you tell me they are not feeding you? What did you do at the beginning, when you said you didn't want me here?"

Holding the bottle between his hands, the man looked down.

"I didn't want to impose," he let out softly. "They would come, throw some food at me during my first days here. Some days they would; some days they wouldn't. I knew what would happen if you were to set foot in this place: you would make a duty out of it, an obligation… and that's what happened - you gave them a reason not to show up at all except for the daily walks around midday to make sure I am still here."

"You should have told me; I would have come – no matter how tired or late. I would have come," worry in her eyes and distress in her tone were the signs showing him that she was ready to do anything in her power for him not to become  _Henry_. "These days… were such hectic days; we've been busier than ever," she tried to explain.

"I thought so," he paused and had another drink, then added: "at first, I thought this new independence had finally pushed you away. There were moments when I thought you were not going to return at all," her hand traveled the outline of his temple and jawline as he leaned into her touch, "but then I noticed the guards were gone as well and I feared. These attacks – those people know that you're my wife; I should have kept my mouth shut and you shouldn't be out in the streets this late during the night." His eyes met hers, a bittersweet grimace taking over his face: of course, he knew the Barristers' Office was placed just outside the Palace – her scratchpad and her handbag were irrevocable decoys assuring him that she had been working late. "All I know from the outside is what you tell me, Zar – and you talk about attacks and rebellion. It's exasperating enough not to be able to be out there, but to know that you're on your own, walking down those streets late at night makes me feel completely powerless."

"I was escorted," she said.

"No, I’m sure you weren't," he retorted quickly, a timid grin beginning to show.

"You didn't want me to accept this job because you felt it could potentially drive me away from you?" It was hard not to take his words as a white flag. Hope, she sensed, finally appearing in the ethereal horizon of his changing states. He remained silent but was unable to look away: brown succumbing to emerald; like most times his untamable heart had had its back against the wall, the words he could not bring himself to say were meant to join the ancient collection of things he should have said. Silence became an assertion, then, suppressing those phonemes that were meant to remain unsaid yet fully understood. "I would have understood, Erron – that is, if you had told me. Sometimes it's easier to say such things, way easier than to keep them all bottled up inside."

She searched her handbag for his last pack of smokes then handed him the tiny red box containing the very last four cigarettes and the lighter accompanying them.

"You have nothing to worry about, not these days at least," she said as his face got clouded by a dense halo of smoke. "The Population Census has begun so there's curfew. That's why I haven't been able to visit you: we need to tag and register every single file before the Committee can start tabulating the results. Today we received the last forms and questionnaires."

"Why now?" Black asked, stupefied.

"What you mean  _why now_?"

"The Kahn informed us about the census months ago – I thought it was already completed by now," he explained.

"Your imprisonment and the dissolution of the Rebel-Seekers Initiative were decisions that startled everyone; then the attacks began so the Kahn concluded that it wasn't the right time. But now that the attacks are getting bigger, now that people are dying out there in the streets…" she paused for a moment, gathering the strength required to be as honest as possible: "The words  _civil war_  can be heard every day, at both sides of the Palace's walls. The emperor thinks that, with the census, we'll at least be able to identify those ones that do not belong among us. Once they are back where they belong there'll only be Outworlders left to take care of. He doesn't want any extra actors to take part in the conflict, especially considering how those outsiders could easily take advantage of the situation," Zarrabayeusse explained.

"That's why the guards are gone," Black reflected. "The wagons."

Zarrabayeusse nodded before resuming her explanation: "Most of the guards have been reposted."

The image of Alex invaded his thoughts – if the majority of the guards had been reposted that could only mean one thing: the Earthrealmers they had found while searching the different areas of the city were now waiting to be deported, they were already somewhere inside the Palace.

"The number of Earthrealmers they found in the regions is far larger than the one they had initially predicted. That's why most guards have been reposted - the guards' new assignment is to prevent these prisoners from escaping the Palace before they are taken back to Earthrealm."

As concerned as he was about the missing doctor, he quickly realized that there wasn't much for him to do about her uncertain fate while behind bars. He didn't even have the certainty that Alexandra was one of the captured Earthrealmers yet something had begun stirring inside of him. A part of him wanted Alex to be there, among the people about to go back to Earthrealm: that's what she had wanted all along. But another part of him was still conflicted, unable to let go from someone he had already abandoned. Even if absent, even if completely out of his reach, that woman still represented the most vivid manifestations of a past, of a certain love that he thought lost to the flames of time and oblivion.

"She's alive."

The words flew from his lips with a virulence that felt alien for him; the overwhelming feeling carried by the possibility of having her near once again was already blinding him. Zarrabayeusse tilted her head slightly, taken aback by his sudden confession.

"Who is?" She asked, unable to follow his train of thought.

"The doctor, the Earthrealmer."

She stared at him with her mouth agape yet he knew that he had unlocked a door that should have remained sealed.

"But…" Zarrabayeusse began only to pause again.

"She's alive," Black carried on as quickly as he could, knowing that his wife's state of confusion wouldn't last forever. As if readying himself for a duel, the gunslinger understood that he had to be quick enough not to let her think, not to let her dwell on the true meaning behind his words. "At least, that's what I think - her name is not Dakota - it's Alexandra," Black confessed. He moved closer to the bars and sat down on the cold ground of his cell, the cigarette trapped between his lips.

He told her their story; from the moment he woke up on Alexandra's house to the very last second of it, when he abandoned the woman in the cold mountain night, the flames of vengeance still igniting the cabin only a few steps away from their perpetual goodbye. There was a slight alteration to his story, however: Aalem did not take any part in it; Alex and the boy had never crossed paths according to his revisited tale, the kid hadn't been there at all.

"I need to find her," he said, ashamed.

"What for?" The woman asked, "You said she wanted to go back home. Well, in case she's alive, in case she's out there, she's going back home now, Erron, do not interfere." He looked down even though a part of him was still determined to find the doctor. "Just leave her be, you've damaged her enough already."

For her, it was impossible not to feel the stories intertwining chaotically inside her chest: the outcome of his abandonment seemed unaltered in both stories; how little it would take for him to ruin the lives of those women determined to help him was truly unsettling.

"I need you to help me," he pleaded, "I know you're doing more than enough for me, I'm well aware of the fact that I have no right to ask you to do anything else for me – but I need you now, Zar."

The woman shook her head in silence, completely unable to understand him.

"Tell me where they are; where are they being kept?" He demanded.

Zarrabayeusse scratched her forehead as she let the words out: "In the back of the Palace, they set up tents near the raised level area."

He took a moment to finish the wine and think about the situation: the Earthrealmers weren't being kept far from his own location yet his current predicament was somehow stretching the distance between him and the zone, making it impossible for him to reach them. The reasons why he felt compelled to reach them were still unclear inside his overwhelmed mind: too many  _ifs_  were suddenly forming up inside of him –  _if_  she was still alive,  _if_  she was one of the captive Earthrealmers,  _if_  he could gather all the information required to know for sure that she was there, within the Palace walls,  _if_  he could reach out to her somehow: then what?

"You work for Yvo now, you must have access to lists and names."

"Have you lost your mind?" The woman yelled, "It's not like I can get my hands on that list but even if I could, what should I look for? Do you have the slightest idea of how many Alexandras we can find in there? Try to narrow it down for me, please. Last name?" She demanded, only causing her husband to frown, exposing his evident lack of knowledge. "Terrific. Age?" The same expression of complete uncertainty contrasted with her own exasperated visage. "Let her go, Erron – if she's here, waiting to be taken back to Earthrealm, just let her go - that's what she has wanted all along, that's what you should have done for her in the first place. Think of this as a poetic way for life to make things even: who knows what could have happened to her have you stayed by her side, considering your own fate. Maybe your abandonment gave her the opportunity to become an independent woman and find her own way back home."

"I don't get it…" the troubled gunslinger let out softly, his words a mere innuendo speaking about a fragility he couldn't hide anymore.

"It's not that hard, actually," Zarrabayeusse said as she grinned softly at him, "Maybe, as years go by, this woman will learn to see your shortcomings as something good; something that ended up helping her instead of destroying her," she said as she brushed her hand across his chin, the soothing touch manifesting a renewed sense of affection, "Trust me, I talk from experience."

The man cupped her hand with his own, the same tenderness showing inside his coffee-colored eyes – even though he understood the meaning of her words he knew, he was positive, that he was meant to do more than just sitting around in a cold, godforsaken cell. He knew his own imagination was not about to let her go so easily; he could already see a variety of possible scenarios playing non-stop inside his troubled head: from the bittersweet image of a free Alexandra, happily resuming her life back home and slowly leaving him behind, to the darker chance of an already dead Alexandra, another ghost consumed by his own mistakes and impulses, forced to spend an eternity in the limbo of his emotions, only summoned by his tormenting memories.

"I need to see her – if she's here, I need to see her, Zar."

"What for? Erron, please be reasonable." Her hands left him and began caressing the cold steel of the bars instead, his obsession was clearly blinding him from the obvious truth: the doctor was a lost cause; it was already too late for him to seek redemption after everything he had done to the woman.

"I need to find her, Zar, I need to know for sure that she's leaving," Black avowed, his baritone voice was louder than before.

"You can't," Zarrabayeusse yelled, tired of feeling frustrated by his lack of perspective.

"I know," he affirmed, "but  _you_  can."

The woman took a step backward, a gesture that was more metaphorical than real in her fruitless search for space, in the indispensable need to distance herself from his stubbornness and his misplaced determination. Erron moved closer to the bars, rather instinctively, and placed his hands in the same spots where her hands had been only seconds ago.

"This pavilion used to be a hiding place for the Royal battalions fighting in the raised level area during the war," he began, his memory struggling for precision, "at the end of this corridor you'll find a ladder; if my recollections from that time are correct, it'll lead you near the zone where the tents are. I need you to go up there and find her for me."

"You've completely lost your mind," the woman argued, already seeing the whole plot displayed before her incredulous emerald eyes. "You are forgetting one small detail – most guards have been reposted, now guess where they are?"

"If you're clever you won't be spotted at all," he asserted, "the ladder will lead you towards the end wall of the palace; the guards – if they are truly there _and_  awake will be standing near the entrance and you, my lovely, would be sneaking in from behind the embankment." The sudden coldness in his tone was letting her know that he wasn't going to let it go; the seed of the idea had already bloomed inside his mind. Her only chance was to go find the woman, avoiding the chance of Black's stubbornness to force him to do something stupid in order to get out of that filthy cell to find the woman himself.

She cupped her face with her own hands and exhaled loudly through her fingers.

"Describe her for me."

By the time those words traveled beyond the frontier of her lips and reached the atmosphere, she had already started to regret her decision.

"Well, she's shorter than me – but taller than you. She's in her late twenties or maybe… maybe in her early thirties…" Black began.

"So much for detail," Zarrabayeusse barked helplessly.

"She has auburn hair, blue eyes – she's pale… her name is Alexandra and she's a doctor but you already know that," he concluded, visibly angry at himself for being unable to provide Zar with a more accurate description. "Take the torch with you, you'll need it," he commanded, causing his wife to shake her head pensively, feeling an unsettling mixture of pity and anger towards him.

Zarrabayeusse took the torch and turned around, already venturing her tired body into the deserted corridor. Just as Black had anticipated the ladder was there, only it didn't look safe at all: the space was too small, the rocky steps seemed loose and uneven after so many years of oblivion and disuse. She breathed in as she approached the darkness, the yellowish light emanating from the torch becoming her only guide through the steep path stretching itself before her eyes. Two hundred and fifty-three steps later, she finally emerged to the quiet night waiting for her outside. It took her all her strength, but she finally managed to remove the many stones covered in moss that were blocking the exit. At first sight, she counted more than forty tents scattered all over the area. She inspected her surroundings carefully, her back glued to the end wall of the Palace: no guards were around – Black had been right, either they were already asleep or they were monitoring the entrance.

Covering her head with her black pashmina, Zarrabayeusse began to walk around the tents, whispering the name  _Alexandra_  as she moved carefully from one canopy to the other.

After walking for what felt like an eternity, she finally heard a female voice answering her call.

“Are you Alexandra?" Zar asked. The woman met her outside the canopy but as the moonlight washed over her face, Zarrabayeusse noticed her physical appearance had nothing to do with the woman Black had previously described for her. This woman was shorter than her, she was a brunette, and her eyes were brown.

"I'm sorry; you're not the one I'm looking for," Zar apologized as she turned around to leave – but then she stop dead on her tracks, turned around again, and asked the woman: "Maybe you can help me: I'm looking for a woman named Alexandra, she has auburn hair and blue eyes," she said yet the woman stared at her rather pensively as if her memory was struggling to remember. "She's a doctor," Zarrabayeusse added, offering another clue.

"Yes – Alex, the doctor," the woman affirmed, "she helped my father while we were on the wagons – she's staying with us but now she's smoking outside."

"Can you take me to her?" Zarrabayeusse asked.

"I don't really want to leave my father alone, but if you walk east, towards the end of the wall, you'll find the canopy where people go whenever they feel like having a cigar. The smoke and the smell should guide you, really," the woman said before going back inside the tent. Zarrabayeusse grinned softly at her as she looked up, already searching for the distinctive shape of a smoke column.  

The dissipated sight found her rather quickly, forcing her to resume her march.

She found them sitting on a dry branch, smoking their cigars in complete silence as if quietly accepting their fates – whatever reason had brought them to Outworld was now lost in the certainty of deportation; their stay in Z'unkahrah was over, they had been caught and the only thing left for them to do about it was to accept that, in fact, there was nothing to do.

Easy to spot among the many solitary men sitting by the fire while reminiscing the lives they had left behind back in Earthrealm, the only woman accompanying them was the living embodiment of Erron's description: her auburn hair was floating freely in the soft breeze adorning the night.

It only took her two steps to be able to see her own reflection inside those big, blue eyes.

"Alexandra?" Zarrabayeusse asked softly as the woman stood up to meet her.

"Yes. And you are?"

She tried to speak, but the words would simply refuse to leave her mouth. She had never seen Amanda before, not even a picture – yet she could see her inside those blue eyes acknowledging her presence. In a way, it was as if Amanda's ghost was still alive inside that woman, eager to break the veil of time with such an uncanny resemblance. The very specter of his one true love was standing right before her stupefied emerald eyes for her to understand why the urgency, why the need – why it was so hard for him to just let her go. The invisible ghost that had tormented and haunted her during her nights had finally acquired a face; a face that was very similar to the one she had imagined on countless occasions - only now, the raw element of being there, in the flesh, was making it impossible for Zarrabayeusse to think clearly.

"Never mind," she whispered, already walking away, "Forget it."

The first steps were short and quick, but soon she found herself sprinting towards the exit – she took the torch that had been waiting for her near the wall and moved some of the stones back to their rightful place before venturing the ladder. Alone, and embellished in the amber-colored light, the woman placed her back against the wall and let her body fall down to the rocky step underneath her flat shoes. She covered her face with her own hands and finally allowed herself to cry, completely moved and overwhelmed by the hurricane of transfixed faces – the same faces that had determined that he was never going to be hers, the same old faces that had become the living manifesto of his love and his affection. Breathing heavily, the woman wiped her tears and stood up slowly; her trembling figure using the wall behind her back for support and stability. Two hundred and fifty-three steps later she was back in the deserted corridor; her body just a mere beacon in a path of solitude. She stopped, inhaled deeply and exhaled loudly as an attempt to fully collect herself before facing him again. A fake sense of tranquility accompanied her during the last portion of the corridor, his cell already visible from her peripheral vision; his forearms leaned against the metallic bars, his curious fingers hovering mid-air, flirting with the now-elusive meaning behind the word _freedom_.

"She's here," she said as soon as she got there; that fire in his eyes, untamable like the stallion galloping inside, accelerating his heartbeats, making him look like a trapped beast: a beast that needed out – now more than ever. "She is leaving with the others."

"I need to  _see_  her."

"I'm telling the truth, she's here, I saw her with my own goddamned eyes," she yelled furiously, "why can't that be enough?"

"I believe you," Black assured her as he moved quickly towards the bars and held her trembling hands with his own, "I believe you, Zar – I do. But I need to see her," he pleaded.

Just like Amanda had disappeared from his life more than a century ago, now the doctor was about to vanish from his days as well. He had never been good at goodbyes but he had never had a chance to say goodbye to Amanda: he had only settled for a sad separation, accepting the fact that she was meant to marry someone else – the rest of her days had remained a mystery to him, he didn't even know when she had died, how she had died… This case seemed determined to repeat the same old story all over again. Yet that goodbye, that final goodbye was the closest approximation to closure for him: he needed to let her go, he needed to say goodbye to that woman knowing that they would never see each other again – unlike Amanda, and her sudden disappearance, this renewed goodbye seemed as certain as to embrace the notion of a lifetime without her.

As tears started to stream down her face once more, Zarrabayeusse looked down.

"I'm really sorry, Erron but you know it's not possible. And even if we could somehow manage to get a permit for you to leave this cell for a while they would know that you lied to them," she whispered as emerald met brown once again, desperately searching for comprehension: "They think she's dead, and maybe it's better that way."

She was right. As painful as it was, his wife was right: he had killed the doctor in his own tale, now he couldn't play God and resurrect her. He retreated to the darker side of his cell; with his back against the wall the marksman began plotting the plan inside his head: it would take a lot from her, more than he could ask her to do – but if it meant getting the chance of seeing Alex again, then it would be worth the risk. He made himself visible as he approached his wife one final time - it wasn't easy for him, jeopardizing the only one person in his life who actually cared about him for a chance to spend a few minutes with some other woman that he couldn't even call his own yet determination had already found its way inside him and it would not let him rest, it would not quiet the voices telling him that even if it was a longshot, it was the only way.

"I need you to get the keys from my cell," Black demanded, coldness in his tone.

"No way," Zarrabayeusse retorted, visibly offended to know that her husband seemed ready to drag her down the same path of instability he had chosen for himself.

"The guard that's always posted by the pavilion gate, he's the one that has the keys to open these cells," the man went on, not really caring about his wife’s negative.

"You can't ask me to do this," she refused once again.

"I know… I know I have no right," Black confessed, "but if you do this for me…" the words  _I'll tell you where Aalem is_ crossed his mind but only briefly – it was already too much to ask her to steal the key to his cell, the sole idea of blackmailing her with the one true thing she had wanted to know all along seemed disgusting – even for someone like him. Acknowledging how desperation had slowly begun corrupting his thoughts, Black took a moment to consider his chances: he wouldn't play her, not after everything she had already done for him. He couldn't afford to lose her now that he had already lost so many things, so many people; the imminent goodbye he was longing to say was the living proof of that.

"If you do this for me…" he stopped again, not really sure how to finish that sentence.

He had nothing to give, nothing to offer. But nothing had been more than enough for her back then.

"This is the very last thing I'm ever going to do for you," she sentenced even though she knew, deep down, that it wasn't true.

She took off her shoes and walked back to the entrance of the pavilion. The guard was still there, sitting on the floor, snoring louder than before. Like an amateur thief, her shaky fingers snatched the handful of keys that was resting on the table before him, the tight grip of her hand pressed hard against the keys, preventing their unwelcomed dance to wake the guard with its particular sound. She went back to his cell as quickly as possible; her nervous hands soon began to try the different keys until, finally, one worked. As the door got opened, she found herself stepping into the cold cell with her arms lingering before him, as if summoning him. He embraced her instinctively, running his fingers through her hair, finally allowing the pashmina to fall down to the ground.

"I'll be back," he said as he caressed her shoulders softly but even though this new-found proximity was killing her inside, the woman was not able to disguise the mistrust embedded in her eyes.

"I'll be back and I'll be quick," Black reassured her, planting a soft kiss on her forehead. "I promise."

She caught him by surprise before he even got a chance to leave as her hand reached out for him, grabbing his wrist and forcing him to turn around again. "Take this," she said as she picked up her black pashmina and covered his head and shoulders with it, "It'll help you to blend in among them."

"I'm one of them, Zar – I don't need to blend in," He grinned softly at her.

"Maybe, but everyone out there knows who you are." She was cautious, and she had every reason to be: no matter his current situation, he still was Erron Black.

"Then it's a good thing I've spent so much time wearing that mask. And don't forget, not many people have seen me like this," he said as he uncovered his head briefly, revealing the single stripe of hair adorning his head.

She instructed him where to find the doctor and watched him in silence as he moved away from her. He got out of his cell, his lungs already receiving the momentary refreshment of unexpected freedom. She closed the door and took his place on the cot, covering her body with the only blanket they had given him, the keys resting against her sweaty palms.

The cowboy ran through the corridor and quickly found himself climbing the ladder, the torch illuminating the way for his bare feet to arrive safely to their destination. Two hundred and fifty-three steps later he came to a halt, removed the mossy stones and stepped into the night. It took him a moment for his irises to welcome the light - even if it was nighttime already there was such a big difference between the cell and that precious outside. He used that brief recess to practice an apology as he mumbled the words “ _I should have stayed with you”_  over and over, the lazy letters coming out of his lips slowly, as if afraid to be heard.

He took a deep breath and walked east, following the smell and the smoke, just like Zar had indicated him.

The doctor was sitting alone on the ground, facing the campfire. Many men were near her but none of them seemed to notice her there. With his heart beating faster than before, the mercenary approached her, placing both his hands on her shoulders and causing the woman to turn around.

She had auburn hair, and her eyes were big and blue.

But she wasn't the Alex he was longing to find.

His hope demolished, the man took a step back and covered his face with his hands, brokenhearted.

"What do you want with me?" The woman stood up and reached him, looking confused. "First this woman comes looking for me and when she finds me, she goes away without saying a word, now you do the same thing…"

As Black started to walk away the woman insisted on following him, her voice becoming a distant echo brushing his ears: "She was wearing that same pashmina, just tell me what you want." She placed her hands on his shoulders and forced him to turn around and face her. "What is this? What do you want?" She asked again but to no avail. She was not the one he had been longing to find and the results of his truncated expedition were unleashing a hollowness inside he couldn't quite contain. He paid no mind to her questions and resumed his march only to be stopped again; this time she was fiercer and more determined than before: "I can do anything you want, anything at all," she whispered in his ear as her hands started to romance his dormant body, "I can't go back; I just can't go back," the woman pleaded desperately yet her need only caused him to flinch under her touch. Tormented, the mercenary pushed her away and ran like a frightened child. He went back to the embankment and removed the stones again, his overwhelmed body already leaving the surface and getting lost in the chiaroscuro of that godforsaken ladder. He sat down on one of the ancient steps, lowered his head, and pressed his temples hard against his knees.

The feeling had found him.

That unwelcomed feeling he had buried more than a century ago; the same feeling of complete desolation he had sworn he would never allow himself to feel ever again.

The same agonizing sensation, all over again, embraced him with the cruelty of a hundred years of denial and improvised oblivion. He saw himself again, the younger version of himself who had chosen to go back and search for Amanda instead of staying with Annie. Amanda was gone but the memories would not stop there, those bitter, painful instants now fully recovered – suddenly, the unparalleled sorrow of what had happened right after his futile attempt to get Amanda back started to creep up on him; the  _after_  becoming as petrifying as the  _before_ : downhearted, he had returned to the liquor store only to find the place had been burnt down to the ground. The flames had already taken Annie, that fire had killed everything in his life: from his unborn child to the very last thread of hope and innocence left in him.

Subjugated by those images as the different eras of his life overlapped on top of each other in the altered theatre of his mind, the mercenary stood up again and ran as fast as humanly possible – he had already lost Annie, he needed to make sure Zar was alright.

As he returned to his own cell he saw his wife asleep on his cot, now that the wicked eclipse of faces was finally over he got on his knees and cried as he let his head fall down helplessly, his forehead already feeling the warm blanket covering Zar. Her hands reached out for him, removing the pashmina that was still covering his head and his shoulders.

"What happened?" She asked, confused.

Unable to talk, the man simply joined her on the cot, burying his head in the soft space between her head and her shoulder.

"Did you find her?" Zarrabayeusse questioned him, using her fingers to guide his chin upwards. He shook his head in silence, unable to explain how life had once again slapped him hard in the face. The woman embraced him then, placing his head against her chest and running her fingers through his head and neck. As his tears stopped streaming down his face, the new parallelism between the women of his life reappeared before his eyes: Alex was Amanda, elusive and forever out of his reach. Zar was Annie, the one he should have protected, the one he should have never abandoned.

The sudden stiffness of his tongue quickly found its way inside her mouth – his heart dead at first, but beating with the rage of everything that's inalterably final as minutes went by. He took her in his arms and she welcomed him. A renewed sense of urgency enraptured them then, their clothes quickly becoming a mere anecdote decorating the floor. As he made his way inside of her, the woman surrounded his back with her arms and hid her face on his shoulder – now it was her time to cry. The sounds of his love were summoning all those truths she had never wanted to face again: even though she was the one in his arms, she was not the one in his head and, definitely, she was not the one in his heart.

Even though he was making love to her, she was not the one he was professing his love to.

Feeling his shoulder coated by her tears, Black stopped and cupped her face with his sweaty hands understanding her pain and finally able to accept it as his own. He kissed her lightly as their bodies collapsed on the cot, their silences uniting them – the indissoluble bond of nostalgia connecting their downbeat spirits into a single bonfire of things unsaid. As he resumed his pace, the woman threw her head back and closed her eyes, trying to savor the moment through parted lips – his hands roamed all over and explored her; that body reconciling itself with his laconic sense of familiarity, her legs imprisoning his back, his tongue tracing the outline of her upper lip.

It seemed that was the way their love was supposed to feel, after all.

So necessarily urgent.

So inherently artificial.


	25. Dada

[7 months and 12 days later]

_The bomb went off just a few seconds after midday. The sun, positioned right above their heads, had been the silent witness of their fear as it watched it all go down from its unreachable zenith in the sky._

_The deadly device had caused a tremendous explosion, a deafening turbulence significantly bigger and louder than the ones caused by its countless yet minor predecessors. The Marketplace had been targeted and the quiet mundanity of yet another day in Z'unkahrah had been stained with the crimson laces of terror._

_The second they heard a crash in the rear of one of the many kiosks displayed around the square, they knew it was already too late for their bones to run for cover. The walls crumbled down fast on the terrified customers, the loud noise that was still ringing inside their ears was paralyzing and that instant, in perfect concordance with the blinding pain that had suddenly encompassed them all, had been as treacherous as an unexpected rainstorm about to ruin the perfect day._

_Some of them, grasping a proper hold of what seemed to be a last-minute moment of clarity, somehow managed to venture their hands as an attempt to reach for their loved ones. Yet those same bloody digits they had to offer were left with nothing but the unbearable touch of dust and debris; the ashes of a pulverized civilization._

_Those who had been lucky enough to survive the explosion, whether by running their legs off as quickly as possible or by mere coincidence, were left with the titanic endeavor of trying to help the wounded with only their agonizing screams guiding them through the horrific scene._

_Now, the distant echoes of those political activists seeking reassurance after the census seemed nothing but diluted words with no true meaning – the Earthrealmers had been deported now yet the environment was still hostile, and the rotten apple contaminating the rest of the fruit was still encysted deep amongst them._

_They still were walking among them._

_Disguised as them._

_But they were the opposite of them._

_Ironically enough, the ones who called themselves Rebel-Seekers were now a consolidated sort of rebellion and they had chosen to spread their darkness in broad daylight. They had waited for the fuss caused by the census to be over; they had cultivated their hatred towards Kotal's decision and now the citizens were the ones paying the price._

_As the first patrols arrived at the scene, the second bomb went off. This time, its effect could not be satiated with simple notions such as destruction or mayhem – the ground shook beneath their disconcerted feet; the devilish crevice stretching itself below them swallowed them all in a mere matter of seconds. One by one, those who were supposed to help the wounded had disappeared into the dark, shallow grave that only moments ago had flourished with life and activity._

_Countless pamphlets flew around the area like obnoxious paper airplanes then; their seemingly ethereal landings quickly decorated the scene, their legacy and their message spreading like an uncontainable virus._

_The Marketplace had now become Ground Zero._

* * *

 Arc III

Chapter XXV

**Dada**

* * *

 " _I assure you: there is no beginning, and we are not afraid; we aren't sentimental. We are like a raging wind that rips up the clothes of clouds and prayers; we are preparing the great spectacle of disaster, conflagration and decomposition."_

Dada Manifesto - 1918

* * *

The echoes of mayhem and disaster had reached his cell. The walls had trembled, causing that annoying white dust to cover the floor as well as the battered surface of his cot. He had heard the screams ricocheting across the small room as they traveled from the convoluted outside; the unmistakable sounds of innocent lives being extinguished – then the louder voices had disrupted the scene, commanding the rest of the people, trying to snap them out of their paralyzing terror.

Then the second explosion had awakened the tremor in his body. New screams had been summoned to join the deranged carnival of horror and vengeance.

So much for peace…

The only thing that had remained calm through the storm had been Henry, even though the mercenary was certain that if that man had actually been alive, he would have been at least startled by the uncertainty of it all. Black shook the blanket that was covering his cot - the dense, white cloud of ancient dust traveling quickly inside his nostrils only to get glued to the inner walls of his lungs. The man coughed, as he covered his mouth with his hands as a futile attempt to try to undo the obvious mistake then he sat on the cot and exhaled, frustrated. According to Zar, the attacks had ceased right after the census - only a few, spontaneous acts such as minimal protests or picketers blocking the streets here and there had remained, scattered all across the Citadel… but nothing serious, nothing other than childish provocations and small, pointless riots; nothing really worthy of their attention or their easily-resolved sense of concern.

Nothing really worthy of their time.

Now it was clear: they had waited – like a lion that waits for its prey to stroll freely through the wet, misty jungle they had crouched in the dark, patiently waiting for the right moment to strike back. The attack had ultimately punished the city; all their patience had finally been translated into a palpable success.

Patience…

For a man like him, patience and time had always been his greatest allies. Now they were being mirrored by an enemy who had learned how to punish him by retaliating with his own weapons and instruments.

As absorbed inside his own thoughts as he was, he didn't pay attention to the dark shadows growing stronger at the other side of the bars. The unmistakable figure approached his cell in complete silence, the unspoken words of ten thousand souls stirring inside the flesh vessel containing them. Ermac hovered before the door - even if his head had been covered by a black leather cape, it was the glowing green of those mystical eyes of his what truly made the captive man look around his shoulder to acknowledge the enforcer's phantasmagorical apparition.

The absence of guards was only logical, after all. They all were needed elsewhere.

Black stood up instinctually as the seemingly weightless specter produced a rusted key from one of his pockets and proceeded to open the door. There was no time for pleasantries or cordial greetings – the mercenary's bemused vision went black as Ermac quickly covered his head with a dark piece of cloth. Hovering silently behind Erron's back and guiding the gunslinger's blind steps through the Palace, the construct of souls tightened up Black's wrists inside a green lace of unbreakable force to prevent the captive ex-Earthrealmer from trying to escape. The man had been clearly weakened by his state of captivity, so there weren't really any concerns regarding an actual chance of Black trying to physically assault his unexpected escort. After a few moments of complete silence, Ermac finally instructed Black to stop in front of the door where he had led him to. The souls' container placed both his hands on Erron's shoulders, compelling the man, even if only tacitly, to try and still his suddenly tensed-up body. The clicking sound of the doorknob being turned from the inside of the room caressed Black's ears in a mere matter of seconds: since Ermac's hands were still pressed hard against his shoulders, pinning his legs to the ground in a seemingly effortless manner, it became obvious: someone had been waiting for him at the other side of the door.

With a slight push from Ermac's hands, the hesitant gunslinger was forced to step inside the room. The door closed quickly behind him, making it impossible for him to walk away. Now freed from the glowing green lace that had been tightened around his wrists only seconds ago, the man lifted his arms gradually, as if asking for permission, and removed the cloth that had been covering his face.

As Black's cold gaze met the emperor, it only took him a second to understand what was truly going on: even though he hadn't been anywhere near the Marketplace, even if he hadn't even seen the attack or its devastating consequences, the importance of the event had taken its toll on Kotal's rule. Finding himself in the Emperor's private bedchamber was speaking about a secrecy that could only mean one thing: whatever had happened out there, it had been big enough for the Kahn to release him from his cell.

As his fingers began toying with the dark cloth that had prevented him from seeing where he was being taken to, the second revelation presented itself rather naturally before his eyes – he had lived so many years in the Palace that trying to simply disorient him now seemed nothing but a poorly crafted maneuver. The secrecy implied by that dark cloth over his head had deeper roots: if the crisis was indeed as big as he had already started to imagine, the Kahn could simply not afford to be seen entering the Maximum Security pavilion - Black was the only man occupying its cells, there would have been no doubt about their encounter.

Black chuckled, bemused to find out that even if a whole year had passed since the emperor had decided to lock him up in that filthy cell, he still was one of his political pawns. With his rule threatened and facing an uncertain ravine, the emperor could not be seen meeting the man he himself had chosen to put behind bars.

Black discarded the piece of cloth with a disdainful stare encysted deep inside his eyes – they had chosen to cover his head for the most obvious of reasons: now that he was a prisoner, he was wearing a common tunic – with his face concealed from curious eyes, he could be anybody.

Anybody they wanted him to be.

Desperation became then the only concept surfacing his thoughts. The Kahn was desperate – the situation was dire. He took a step forward and approached the troubled ruler: deep down Black was aware of the importance of meeting the Kahn for the first time since the trial. The gunslinger had nothing left to lose; if he could somehow manage to balance the scales in his favor, the situation could prove actually useful for him, providing him with unexpected, sudden leverage over his former employer.

"Kotal," Black finally said.

The emperor nodded quietly, acknowledging his presence.

"I can barely recognize you now,"

A whole year had passed since the emperor had seen the mercenary for the last time. The anniversary was more of a sad presage than an actual celebration: they had chosen to strike back during the first anniversary of M'horel's execution.

"You should’ve seen this comin' from a mile away," Black teased.

"You are a museum of novelties, really," Kotal found himself acknowledging as the image of this new, fallen from grace man hit his eyes – the dark pools underneath the former enforcer's eyes were speaking about a lack of sleep, a certain insomnia contaminating his troublesome nights. They had altered his physical appearance: from his hair to his clothes, the one standing in front of him was light years away from the gunslinger he had chosen to put behind bars. His weakened body, thinner and subtly kissing goodbye the solid walls of muscle that had shaped his contemporary form, was the living proof that life in prison came with a price: if not completely starved, at least his stomach could at least have a taste of what it felt like to lack the substance brought by the luxuries of living a more pleasurable life.

The emperor rose up from his seat and surrounded the prisoner. He placed one of his hands on Black's impoverished shoulder and exhaled loudly, the sound was more of a condescending lament than an actual sign of sympathy.

"It might be surprising for you, that I've decided to see you after all this time,"

A whole year had passed; the mercenary had been keeping score of the days, the nights, the hours, the seconds. Every particle of his seemingly endless time now paused to please the game of politics and bureaucracy dictated by the emperor's agenda.

Black found himself seething instinctively, the contrasting schemes of colliding interests now clearly displayed before his burning coffee eyes.

"I thought you would at least come to visit me," Erron taunted, "I know my cell can't offer the comfort your office is entitled to but I can assure you – it's cozy enough for us to have a nice little talk."

The emperor grinned minutely at the impertinence carried inside the gunslinger's words – no matter how visually different that man was, it was reassuring for the Kahn to discover that the legendary cowboy was still fighting inside that graceless shadow of a man.

"Only thing is… I know it's not wise for an emperor to visit the scum he himself chose to condemn, especially in times of trouble. It's better for the scum to be delivered - to save your royal office from the shame that it is to have to ask for advice from a man deprived of his freedom. It would be like undoing your own actions, Kotal, and you can't afford to do that – not now that the Rebel-Seekers have yelled check-mate to your throne."

Kotal's cheeks flushed with anger; the warmth brought by the unexpected weight of Black's words was adding to the turmoil in his head. The baritone voice of his twisted moral compass was reverberating across the quiet room, awakening the echoes of those who had surrendered their lives without even truly wanting to – the desperate screams of the innocents realizing way too late that they had been caught up in a game they were not supposed to be playing. The common citizen, hostage of a violence that could only be defined as familiarly alien; the children, men and women who had been mercilessly eradicated from the hostile surface of such a hostile world – and now  _his_  words, riveted with the eloquence of those who know that time is by their side, were ringing inside his ears like a bad joke laughing in the faces of those whose time had just run out.

"What do you want, Kotal?"

Insulted by Black's clear lack of sensitivity, the Emperor took a deep breath before asking: "Do you know  _why_  I hired you?"

Black crossed his arms over his chest, the sharp and bold statement  _because I'm trustworthy_  formed inside the barrier of his lips to finally travel beyond his suddenly scornful throat. He knew no one could ever define him as trustworthy, yet a part of him was still resentful after the Kahn's decision – keeping him locked up in a small, dirty cell somehow felt as terrible as having the ancient skin of his neck kissing the insufferable guillotine. Kotal's resolution might have ended the nefarious Rebel-Seeker known as M'horel yet inside the gunslinger's most intimate core, he was feeling as annulled as a life that was no more.

His existence behind bars had been reduced to a nothingness so dense it was impossible to be ignored.

Repressing his anger was now the only task that was left for him to focus on, finally understanding that the future of Outworld's ruler was at stake: everything Dexitis had worked for was at stake; his own loyalty now subjugated under the same fire that had corrupted the city streets.

The emperor let a soft, amused grin shape the outline of his lips: it was understandable, after all, that Black was having a hard time trying to face his authoritative figure now that he had been separated from everything that had once used to define his very essence. If he was to regain the power he was supposed to have over his own citizens he could only start by working his way from the inside - regaining Black's trust and understanding seemed like a suitable first step: in order to clean the streets, his own house was supposed to be taken care of in the first place.

"When we were first introduced you had just betrayed Mileena so no,  _trustworthy_  is not the word I would use to describe you. You are loyal. To money, mostly, but at least you know what loyalty is," Kotal began. "But that's not why I hired you, Erron. I hired you because you are simple."

The emperor took a seat in the scarlet settee that was placed right beside his bed then placed both his hands on his knees before resuming his speech.

"Many Earthrealmers are far from being simple, but you are. Your guns, your money, your skills, your  _reputation_  – that's all there is to you. You are a man of many layers, I have learned that the hard way; but that is only because you've lived longer than the average Earthrealmer – all those borrowed years have indeed constructed a solid baggage of experiences that have ultimately shaped your every action. Yet your behavior still responds to your simple standards,” he added as he crossed his arms, “Your interests are simple as well and that's what counts in the end, Erron. That is what defines you - and I happen to find simplicity to be one of the best qualities a man can have."

"I thought you hated surprises," Erron retorted, his voice weak as if being helplessly dragged down into the unwelcome lecture of his own life.

"I do hate surprises, but I also understand. Can you imagine a man your age with no layers?" The emperor asked, raising a stoic eyebrow, "One could say he has wasted the majority of his time."

Black frowned in discontent – he could understand the Kahn's words yet, deep down, he was having trouble trying to decipher the true message hidden behind the seemingly parental preaching he was being forced to listen. Like a little boy who had misbehaved and had been caught red-handed, now the father was trying to teach him a lesson, tough love and strategic pedagogies applying – only there was no lesson for the gunslinger to learn; he was no stranger to his own condition, he was a connoisseur of his own strengths and his own limitations.

"What's the point?" He demanded, mildly bemused, sheer despondency tainting his baritone voice with a darker, more profound note.

"I need to know, Erron: is there anything you may have  _forgotten_  to tell us?"

A masquerade of grim negligence took over the gunslinger's face then – the implications carried within Kotal's words were still sabotaging his intentions. No matter how kind the emperor was trying to be, deep down he still had no problem at the time to address him as a treacherous delinquent.

Black shook his head in silence yet the coldness in his eyes was trying its best to pierce through the Emperor's calm demeanor. Not only he had had the nerve to imprison him; now he was also implying that there had been more to Erron's story.

"What are you afraid of, Kotal?"

"I am not afraid of anything, Black," the emperor retorted coldly, fed up by the marksman's impertinence. "I just can't stand the irony of our current situation: we got rid of most Earthrealmers thanks to the census, we even managed to patch thing up with General Blade in the process by delivering thousands of criminals that were bound to be trialed and incarcerated – we thought this ridiculous problem had been successfully eradicated until today…" Kotal extended his hand, reaching out for the gunslinger – the emperor handed Black one of the many pamphlets that had flown through the Marketplace, the message was cruelly clear:

_Earthrealmers were never the problem._

"As soon as all Earthrealmers were deported, we started a campaign to make sure everyone was finally able to feel safe again. I guess I was too blind to see that Earthrealmers were just pawns playing a small part in all this;  _we_  are the problem."

Black inspected the pamphlet with eyes full of concern – the volatile nature of Outworlders seemed to be out of their own hands; their talent for sin now fully displayed for everyone to see.

"This flock of sheep seems to be going astray," Black reflected as he handed the paper back to Kotal. "Maybe they have started to obey a different shepherd."

The emperor scratched his chin, his mind lost in thought.

"Or perhaps they are still obeying the same old shepherd they had before… we never really found out whether the brothers were the leaders or not."

"Please… those two were amateurs," Black chuckled involuntarily, somewhat offended to know that such a formidable warrior as Kotal Khan would ever consider M'horel and Pareedis to be capable of commanding such an intricate syndicate as the Rebel-Seekers'. Understanding that the Emperor had only turned to him because he was desperate, Erron turned around and decided to leave.

 It was pointless for him to stay there – he had been punished and damaged already.

"You know this is your fault, right?" The Kahn yelled, sensing the obvious: he was about to lose the battle.

"No, of course, it's not," Black replied sharply as he turned around to exhibit the defiant look in his eyes. "The Rebel-Seekers; this breeding ground… this is all on you, Kotal. You may think that I don't give a rat's ass about politics and you're right – I don't, but the fact that I don't care about politics doesn't mean that I don't understand the game of a puppeteer like you. You needed a cheaper force, so you turned your own citizens into underpaid soldiers, then you took it all away from them and now they are retaliating. Same thing goes for me: you may have fooled the people into thinking that I overstepped my own duties and obligations, they may believe that I have abused my power but you don't care about any of that, you don't care that I killed that boy – this is a personal vendetta, Kotal, this is about Kano. This is the price I have to pay for disobeying your orders." Darkness took over his features as the ex-Earthrealmer approached the emperor, his blood burning inside his veins. If there had been any trace of hope inside of him now that they had temporarily released him from his imprisonment, now it was lost to his own anger – he knew he was bound to regain the emperor's trust yet the cowboy mercenary had had enough of Kotal's elaborate chess of crossed politics: he still was a pawn trapped inside a game that wasn't even his, he had lost everything and nearly everyone in the process of quenching a thirst that was not suffocating his own throat. No, they hadn't released him because he was needed outside: he still was a tool, now more than ever, and that fact was making it impossible for the nearly bicentennial man to stay calm.

"That's why Ermac had to cover my head for me to be here now; that's why you couldn't come to my cell to see me: you're no longer a fighter, you're leader, a _ruler_ – you're a  _politician_  now," the word, propelled from his irascible mouth, had been polluted with such unparalleled disdain. "You needed to make sure that no-one other than your closest allies would see you anywhere near me – it's just not good for  _politics_ for the emperor to be seen seeking advice from a delinquent, I see it now."

Even though Erron was speaking the truth, the Kahn had had enough of his improvised outburst of honesty. He connected his enraged fist to the gunslinger's jaw; the first hit in a concatenation of rhythmical punches meant to quiet the voices inside his troubled head. The ex-Earthrealmer landed on his back, his fists rose to defend his now-weakened body from the shower of anger raining over him with the might of a hundred thunders. Kotal seemed blinded by his own impotence now that Black's unwelcomed eloquence had confirmed his every suspicion: he was the one responsible for the attacks, he had created the Rebel-Seekers; an underground association meant to make his job easier. Now things had gotten out of hand, every decision he had made had only made things worse. Abashed, Kotal took a good look at his own knuckles, now coated by the mercenary's blood – that body there, on the floor, begging for his mercy, was light years away from the man he had hired way back then.

And that had been his fault too.

Black's misfortune was his own misfortune.

Black's made up tales were the stories he had chosen to believe in.

Black's secrets were the embodiment of his own carelessness and lack of interest – as long as the gunslinger delivered there was no need to ask, no need to know, no need to interfere.

In a way, Black himself was the emblem of Kotal's complete indifference.

Powerless, and feeling his strength slowly leaving his shivering body, the emperor kneeled down on the ground in front of Black. The gunslinger flinched at the sudden proximity now that those large arms were not towering over him from a distance anymore. With his cheeks cut open and bleeding from the thrashing, Black ran his fingers through his skin acknowledging his own blood as the sigil of his truth – Kotal's reaction had been nothing but the feeble pantomime of his frustration; his enraged fists had motioned through his every misplaced emotion and Black had only been the uninvited ghost breathing life into the shadows tormenting the battered ruler.

"You done?"

Erron stood up, his hand still pressed hard against his swollen jawline – as weak as he was now, there was no way for his body to fight back, and they both knew that.

"This has been my fault, not yours," Kotal finally asserted, the impending migraine and the shame caused by the sudden realization of what he had just done to Black were debilitating his otherwise solemn tone. "I feel compelled to ask you now, since praise is usually a bad advisor," he lifted his chin stoically, as if trying to endorse his words by a cultivated halo of stoicism, "I have hindered everything and everyone you had by imprisoning you – that makes you a resentful man and resentment can potentially lead to the truth I'm willing to hear from you now that you don't need to be condescending: am I a bad leader? Has power corrupted me? Have I become the smoldering example of what I myself have tried so hard to destroy?"

His power compromised, the Kahn was left with no other choice than to seek truth in a condemned man. Black sat up again, stretched his numb legs and used his thumb to brush off the intrepid stream of blood still cascading down the corner of his mouth.

"It takes two to tango – one has to corrupt the other, but the latter needs to allow that corruption to take hold." He raised an eyebrow; the ardor in his lips vivid through his diction as crimson stains became visible, contaminating his teeth and gums.

"Not fighting it also does the trick, y'know? I mean, you don't necessarily have to welcome corruption - if you just choose to turn your back on it, it's basically the same."

Intriguing as ever, the mercenary had not only described the true dynamics behind the shared correlate between the emperor and the Rebel-Seekers but he had also described the bond uniting him to his former employer, the same bond between him and his wife, the same bond that had defined his days alongside the missing doctor.

"This problem is that all this has gotten way beyond the limits of your power," Black declared, "I think they still move inside your own ranks so I would definitely suggest you to get rid o' them all – the only problem would be, who would be left for you to hire? This attack has not been coincidental, not today."

The emperor's pensive gaze unfocused slowly until Black became a mere beacon of grey and white scattered on the floor. The mercenary was right; the date had not been whimsical: a whole year had passed since M'horel's execution, the attack had been their sad expression of a nefarious first anniversary. The place they had chosen to strike had also been symbolic enough to catch their attention: they had chosen to destroy the Marketplace, the very same place where Pareedis' body had been found, more than a year ago.

Their leaders and their cause were clearly not forgotten.

As Kotal Kahn stood up, he extended one of his arms to help Black up – the gunslinger took it, cautious yet somehow more at ease now that his voice was finally being heard.

"If anything, I think I might have helped you by keeping you behind bars," the Kahn reflected as he retreated to the settee and Black's brow furrowed rather despondently at the sound of those words; it was hard for him to imagine his own situation as beneficial.

"You represent their failure; you are the embodiment of their defeat."

The mercenary scratched his head, contemplative.

"I'm not so sure this can be seen as a defeat."

The destruction of the Marketplace, combined with the countless lives that had been lost because of the Rebel-Seekers' twisted logic and mad attempts at retribution were solid pillars in a path of desolation and uncertainty – the Kahn had disbanded the initiative, officially at least, yet their thirst was not quite quenched yet and, deep down, Black knew he had been their Waterloo but still, and far from surrendering, they were determined to fight back the authority, erasing the order and the stability that Kotal and his rule had provided the realm with.

"In a way, I think I’m happy that the Earthrealm doctor is dead. I'm not trying to be rude; I'm not even trying to say that it was a good thing those ingrates murdered that poor woman," The emperor let out, his voice almost a timid whisper hovering in the empty space between him and the mercenary. "I just can't imagine the hell her life would be right now; the horrors they would have made her go through just because she was with you – you are safe behind those bars now but I doubt I could have done anything to protect her."

After spending a whole year, his first year of many more to come deprived of the outside world, it finally weighted heavily within his most private core: time and distance were factors that moved like silent predators, almost as if they had a mind of their own. His reactions were also changing – if someone had dared to vociferate such an honest thought about the missing doctor, he would have had pressed his bare hands against their necks. Now, summoning her through time and distance seemed to be innocuous enough for him to keep his impulses in check. Now, his own uncertainties were making it impossible for his dormant senses to finally wake up: after their truncated encounter, the doubts inside his mind had increased significantly, forcing him – even if unconsciously – to detach his thoughts from the woman. Like Amanda, Alex was now a prisoner of his most intimate, darkest pending issues and unfinished business. Yet nothing, absolutely nothing seemed to be powerful enough to rescue her from that ghostly obituary he had created with his indifference and his hesitation.

The Population Census had come and gone – Alexandra was now a simplified past tense moving further and further away from him with each passing day.

Still, caught up by the unknown and unable to fight the good fight still raging from within himself, Black took a few seconds to assimilate the facts he had gathered so far: his own predicament had indeed weathered the convoluted memories he had of the time they had spent together. Her figure, now a mere disassociated shape with no true meaning or validity was becoming gradually blurrier with each passing day. Her voice was nothing more than a distant echo; the impossible treasure of her laughter now a confusing fragment of his own existence. Her fear and her bravery were now nothing but disjointed ideas, interspersed in the seemingly endless shortcuts of his own conflicted memory, a memory that had already seen too much, lived too much to try to hold on to the ashes of a particular someone that had never been actually his.

The doctor, following in Amanda's footsteps, was now embedded deep inside the eternal shadows of ignorance; encompassed inside the complete lack of awareness that had sprung all over him, unwilling to let him go.

What was it like – to walk down the corridors of their last days?

Their last days, alone, without him, were now a cross for him to bear knowing that in both cases, he had held the power to turn things around. Instead of crying like a small child, he knew he should have taken Amanda by the hand and forced the girl to leave Arroya with him instead of waiting in vain at the station. Instead of abandoning the doctor, he should have stayed with her.

"What was her name?" The emperor asked, his voice weak and serene now, as if acknowledging Black's inner turmoil.

"Please... Now you care." A timid grin curled the gunslinger's upper lip but it was far from being a tender offer of his peace; far from it – it was the materialization of all his bottled-up resentment.

"I do, believe it or not. She saved your life and she was there with you, in your cabin. I can only assume she was the prey that made you want to go hunting so often."

"Was that some sort of an insinuation, Kotal?" The ex-Earthrealmer retorted yet the emperor shook his head, one of his hands moved slowly as if dismissing Black's sudden tenseness.

"I can understand your attachment to this woman; perhaps she triggered something inside of you that counterpointed your otherwise sexist mannerisms – not  _love_ , I know you're incapable of experiencing such a feeling," Kotal explained, "that is yet another reason why I hired you; you've lived for so long now that emotions do not really get to you. But that's about it, I know your personal life can surprise me from time to time but your professionalism always exceeds all those bumps along the road, you're just not built that way."

The emperor stood up again and approached the quiet mercenary.

"I see you like a very old tree, Erron. Remember what I said earlier about your layers? Each year has thickened your bark yet the vital sap flowing inside the structure remains inalterable: it defines you as a man on his own, with his guns, his perfected skills and his unquenchable thirst for money as his sole credentials. That's why I was so angry at you, you nearly gave it all up because of this woman; she represents nothing but a desire gone wrong, she's nothing but a  _skirt_  blown out of proportion."

"She saved my life."

"And for that, she shall be forever in our debts," the emperor retorted darkly. Now that he was being honest about what he truly thought about the supposedly dead woman, there was no need for him to hide his true colors any longer.

"If you truly want to show some appreciation you should not be hiding her. Now that she's gone, she should be remembered, she should be honored. But you chose to erase her instead."

"I never saw you being so appreciative of our healers," the emperor added, his commanding tone now reproachful. "You have a wife, everybody knows it now – there's no place for extramarital affairs. You should have known better, it's clear that whatever happened between you and this woman went far beyond the limits of her clinical concern. You lost your mistress in that cabin – I'm really sorry for the both of you but you  _do_  have a wife whether you like it or not; I will not build an altar to commemorate a corrupted enforcer's fallen lover."

Like a hammer hitting the back of his head, the marksman felt pained to know that, to the eyes of the emperor, the doctor could only be remembered by something that had never even happened. He opened his mouth to protest but succumbed to his own receding energy, as the little strength he still had in him slowly began to abandon his body. He could have explained that she had been so much more than an untouched mistress – she had tried to ransom his doomed soul and had failed miserably; she had fallen victim of her own good intentions.

Yet he couldn't really blame the emperor for considering her a mere basal necessity for him.

His reputation had always preceded him, after all.

Still, it was immensely painful to acknowledge that nothing had happened between him and the doctor; that every time he had tried to kiss her she had branded his skin with her indelible, irascible fingers – that the loveliest memory he had of her was also the bitterest: lips against leather, hands everywhere and nowhere at the same time, the flames creeping up on them and her longing for him, only to find the impervious blazes of his abandonment in return.

The man she had dusted off, the one who really cared, had gotten lost during that night by the fiery mountainside. All that was left of him was yet another man, the one that had been trapped behind bars, forever doomed to fight oblivion; a man creating memories from lies.

He moved his lips but no sound came out.

"We're trying to change some misconceptions – family comes first, Erron. I don't care if your marriage is as strong as an air castle; you are bound to honor our social politics:  _family comes first_."

Politics, again, was corrupting the life force of everything that should have remained immaculate.

"And speaking of family, where is the boy?"

Black cursed under his breath, perplexed yet mildly infuriated.

"She told you, didn't she?" He raised a suspicious eyebrow – even though he knew he could not blame her. She had the right to know, after all.

"He's  _dead_ , isn't he?"

His coffee-colored eyes were subtly betraying his false determination now that they seemed surprised and bewildered.

"That puppy would have followed its master, Erron. That boy would be sleeping at your feet in the cell – and don't even bother telling me that he's away or that he doesn't know: the news of your imprisonment traveled very fast, I highly doubt there's a single soul out there that hasn't heard about it."

Corralled and helpless, Black lowered his head in silence.

"She doesn't know, does she?" The Kahn was still balancing the scales in his own favor; more leverage had been gained in a seemingly effortless manner.

"I need to take care of her." The gunslinger reckoned, ashamed.

"You can barely take care of yourself now," the emperor retorted, "but I won't be the one to tell her; I give you my word." Kotal patted Black on the shoulder as the troubled gunslinger flinched underneath the unwelcomed touch. "A part of me wishes he was here, though. That brat, just like his father, was a great advisor; definitely better than you."

Ermac entered the room to find both, the Kahn and the mercenary grinning lightly – their bittersweet gestures professing a silent homage to the young Edenian they had both held dear.

"I'll ask you one last time, Black," Kotal said as Ermac's green force became tight around the gunman's wrists. "Is there anything you might have  _forgotten_  to tell me? Think about your wife; she's nothing but a common citizen… if there's something you want to tell me, this is the right moment, this is how you can take care of her."

Black chuckled disdainfully as an ironic gesture took over his face. He turned around and started to leave, immediately followed by Ermac who was still carrying the dark piece of cloth that was meant to cover the gunslinger's head.

"Funny, I thought I heard you say I can barely take care of myself."


	26. Dead Man Talkin'

Arc III

Chapter XXVI

**Dead Man Talkin'**

**(Sins of the Father)**

* * *

 " _For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."_

Isaiah 55:10-11

* * *

_[3 months and 2 days later]_

He knew the button resting carelessly on the ground must have been Zar's. It was nothing but a tiny, dull circle of vermillion with two small perforations in the center where the lifeless edges of a frayed black thread were still showing. He got on his knees and stretched one of his arms until his fingers were able to grab the small treasure he had found. Black's amused eyes inspected the item carefully: as his memory recalled the garments inside his own wife's wardrobe, the image of Zar's favorite cape came to mind, even if only to grace the surface of his thoughts.

She must have lost it, he thought, as he removed the thread quite carefully.

"What?" He asked as his eyes found Henry's dead body wasting away in the cell across the hall. He had gotten worse, according to the mercenary's opinion, now that there was little to no skin left to cover the bones. "Oh…" the gunslinger added then, raising a suspicious eyebrow. "Buddy, you really shouldn't have."

His fingers trapped the button as his eyes began to show some unexpected candor. Just as if it was the birthday present he had always wanted to get, he smiled softly and placed the small vermillion item on his cot. Then he moved towards the bars again and leaned his shoulder on them.

"Did Zar tell you?" He asked nonchalantly. He wasn't exactly waiting for Henry to answer – he knew how things worked between them: he would talk, and the helpless corpse would be forced to  _listen_. "We have plenty of time until she comes, my friend," Black sang, a sultry tone invading his baritone voice. "And you know it's my birthday, after all."

Storytime was about to begin, or so it seemed. It was nothing but an elaborate way for Black to keep track of his own memories and life experiences as well as staying lucid in the present, using Henry as his involuntary listener. Even if the recounting of his adventures (and misadventures) was powerful enough to take him back to simpler, happier times of his life, it could also lead him to darker swamps of mistakes and regrets. Before his imprisonment, he would have never accepted to bare his own history so willingly but now his prolonged confinement had left him with no other choice but to spill all those sacred secrets he had been bottling up for such a long time.

"Do you know how old I am today, bud?"

He paused for a moment, as if allowing Henry to guess his age.

"No, I'm older than I look, I'm afraid," he chuckled. "I'm turning 175 today." Black sat down on the ground, his face only inches away from the bars. "Let me see which one of my stories you haven't heard yet…" he paused again, as his brain traveled far away, searching for the perfect tale.

"Well, you already know about Jessica," the mercenary mused as his voice trailed off to finish his sentence: "and, uh, – it's way too early for erotic tales, those are more of a…  _midnight_  kind of thing, you know? Like the stories I tell you once  _she_  is gone." Of course, Jessica's tale had been tainted with the crimson droplets of revenge and violence but that part of the story was a chapter he wasn't interested in revisiting.

"I could tell you the story of my 23rd birthday," he contemplated the idea as his coffee-colored eyes began to spark. "That's one of my personal favorites, I must confess. And it's the kind of story I'm sure you're gonna like."

It was time for him to take yet another walk down memory lane, and even if he wasn't entirely happy with the activity, deep down he was certain it was the only thing left for a man like him to do. The memory seemed fresh enough inside his beating chest, the actions and the actors involved had left such indelible marks all over his body he could still retell every second of it. He crossed his arms over his chest as the words began to flow freely – a younger Erron was all he could see now; a boy kissing away the sordid remnants of an already lost innocence to finally embrace the life of the mercenary.

The Nomad and the gun for hire were about to become the same person.

* * *

Brenham, TX. April 26th - 1866

* * *

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday –  _mercenary_ ; happy birthday to you."

The disgusting sensation of having those hands pressed hard against his shoulders was enough to make him shiver. The never-ending nightmare he had been forced to live had become nearly unbearable for the young kid in his early twenties. The man walked around the table and sat down on the last chair to the left, sliding a folded piece of paper towards the visibly unhappy birthday boy and Erron stretched one of his hands to accept the paper, knowing all too well what his tired eyes were about to find the second his fingers unfolded the missive: the name of his next target.

Now that the war was officially over, they had turned him into a hostile tool meant to satiate their needs and right their wrongs – he had become the one behind the trigger, the temerarious executioner that could make them weep at the slightest exhibition of his credentials: his cold and nearly spiritless stare and his deadly skills for sin.

No longer standing on the losing side of history, they had trapped him over a year ago when he had returned from Arroya only to find that the old liquor store where he and Annie had been living was nothing but ashes. Feeding his eyes with the tormenting image of his own life falling apart at the seams, the saddened boy had gotten on his knees and cried, absorbed and powerless, completely alone for the very first time yet he couldn't leave her there. Even if danger was still lurking around every corner he got up, determined to bury the nineteen-year-old nurse. As the flames began to dance away their magnificence, he ventured his body inside the store and rescued his invaluable box of memories, still intact inside one of the upper drawers, then moved closer and picked up Annie's charred body. He covered the girl with his own poncho and went back outside.

The twenty-two-year-old soldier walked around the cabin, laid his deceased girlfriend down on the still-warm earth and began digging her grave when the voices startled him.

"Is that for you, boy?"

As he turned around and looked over his shoulder, he encountered five soldiers. The colors they were wearing confirmed his every suspicion. The five men surrounded him slowly and the boy moved his hands to both sides of his waist. He was outnumbered – but he was brave.

One of the soldiers, the one who had spoken before, moved near him and got on his knees, reaching for the nurse's body. He uncovered her face and pretended to be sorry for the young girl.

"She was very beautiful – very  _educated_ ," the man said as he brushed his calloused fingers across Annie's forehead. "She had just finished writing this letter when we found her; let's see what it says, shall we?" The soldier produced then, a folded piece of paper from one of his pockets – its corners were burnt, just as if he had decided to rescue the letter right after the fire had begun.

Erron's hands were itching; the deadly power of his trigger was summoning him. Yet there was nothing left for him to do now that the rest of the soldiers had placed themselves around him, flanking both his sides; their arms trapping him rather easily. Standing beside Annie's body, the words began to flow:

" _Dear Mamma_  – blah, blah, blah.  _You see, as days go by, sensitivity is slowly leaving me; it's just as if death and horror have become part of this landscape, and there's nothing we can do about it. I wish you were here to hold me_ , poor thing, so young… let's see… more sentimentality…  _I have followed Erron to an abandoned liquor store a few miles away from the battlefront…"_

As the man kept on skipping parts only to read his very own personal selection, the blood on Erron's veins started to boil; the warmth of his anger tainting his cheeks red. Not only they had murdered Annie – it was clear now that those men had already read the letter, invading the fallen nurse's privacy, and now they were finding their pleasure in corrupting the remains of their truncated bond.

" _We're going to lose this thing, Ma. Erron's certain –_ What a visionary…  _He has plans for the future, you know? He says he's going to talk to his uncle and become a miner._ " As the soldier kept on reading, his voice became nothing but a cheap mockery, as if Annie's thoughts and feelings were nothing but a macabre joke.

" _I trust you haven't told Papa that I'm with child_."

The boy's troubled heart stopped dead on his mouth.

"Oh, this is my favorite part…  _I still haven't told Erron either, I just don't know how. Sometimes he's just so absorbed in his own world that he seems to be unreachable, it's like he's right here with me but long gone at the same time and it breaks my heart to know that he's still probably mourning his mother when I'm about to tell him that he's about to become a father… I'm afraid it might break him inside, it really frightens me to think that this lovely boy left his hometown and joined a war because he had nothing left to lose, he just wanted to die – but now the South will fall and things shall change; who knows everything we’ll lose when that happens? And when the baby comes he's also going to lose that solitude he has treasured ever since joining this fight. I know he's not ready to become a father, he doesn't want to be ready, that's for sure – but what can I do? How am I supposed to force him into accepting this whole new life when he probably doesn't want to be a part of it?_

As all the soldiers laughed at their tragic fate, the sad, unwelcomed indiscretion went on.

 _“I know becoming a father is not what he wants – but all I can do is hope; hope that this child will make him come back down to me, hope that there will be a happy ending for us – once this war is over, once we're a family._ There's more but… think you've heard enough, kid _,_ " the man said as he folded the letter and exhibited it.

Numb and completely paralyzed, Erron stood still as the soldier walked towards him. There was a certain air of petulance inside his eyes, a subtle superiority meant to destroy what was left of that poor boy's spirit.

"I'm sensing two things, boy," the cold-hearted man began as he crossed his arms over his chest. "The first one, you are Erron. The second, you had no clue the bitch was knocked up.  _You're_   _welcome_ , by the way."

He had no idea Annie was pregnant with his child yet it enraged him to know that they had made the choice for him. He didn't want any children; he wasn't even in love with her but the choice should have been his and, deep down, he knew he would have done anything in his power to become a good father for that baby. Erron moved, finally, driven by sheer fury – his gestures were nothing more than a convoluted series of nearly spasmodic attempts to snatch the letter from that man's hands.

Laughing at the boy, the soldier let the paper fall down to the ground for Erron to take it. The future mercenary got on his knees as he picked up the letter and placed it in his pocket. As the five men kept on laughing at his desperation, the boy stood up again, ready to unleash hell.

The fight didn't last long but the final numbers were far better than the ones he could have ever expected.

He killed two, wounded another two – one in the thigh and the other in the shoulder blade - and fell before the last one: the one who had read the letter, the one with the name Carlisle written on his uniform. The minute Erron's gun had dared to address the man's kneecap it was over for him – the fight was over; he had been trapped. There was no way out for his young impulses to run away.

"I won't kill you, boy," the man said as he got on his knees, completely careless about the blood or the pain the boy had inflicted; the blade of his knife pressed hard against Erron's neck. "That's what you want me to do, right? You wanna die, you little piece of shit? I’m not gonna kill you, son, I’m not gonna give you the pleasure of ceasing to exist. I hate conformists, so I won't turn you into one." Carlisle snapped his fingers for the rest of the battalion to join them.

They took a nearly unconscious Erron by the armpits and dragged him across the floor.

"I'm keeping this one – I like when they fight back," he heard Carlisle say as he moved away from him.

"Sir, what's with the box?" One of the soldiers said as he held on to Erron's box of memories.

Carlisle approached the battered boy and slapped him hard across the face causing his idle eyes to meet his.

"That yours, boy?" The man asked, and Erron nodded. "You want it?" The boy nodded again. Carlisle opened the box then, to make sure it was safe for them to take it. "Papers, an old rusty knife that couldn't hurt anyone, tickets… a bible.  _Memories_. You sure you want it, son?" he asked again.

Erron nodded in silence, for the third consecutive time.

"Your cross, boy. Not mine," Carlisle commented as he closed the box again. They had taken it all away from him – letting him keep a brown box of memories wouldn't hurt.

Erron became their war prisoner, but his stay behind bars lasted less than ten months. One morning, at the very beginning of 1866, Carlisle released him from his cell. They branded his shoulder – the scorched metal stigmatized his skin with the mark of what he was: a boy who had stood on the wrong side of history. They turned him into a gun for hire in no time; if he wanted his freedom back, he was supposed to earn their trust by proving his loyalty. Even if he knew they would never set him free, he still listened every time Carlisle would talk about his duties and how important it was for such a young man to become useful and  _give something back_.

Brenham's brand new mayor, McIntyre, appeared like hope on the horizon after a long period of anarchy. Now that the city had found a new leader, things were about to change. The inexorable truth was that the man's government was only going to last for a year – yet in their minds, they knew it was high time for them to sweep the streets and clean the mess that the Civil War had made.

Carlisle and his group, one of the most fervent fractions brought by the Union, had found the perfect killing machine in the hands of that troubled boy they had just branded. Erron wasn't a fool, he knew that the mark on his shoulder was much more than a sick, perverted way for them to torture him for his thoughts; it was also their insurance policy. If things were to go south during one of his jobs, the brand would be enough for him to become their helpless cannon fodder. As usual, Carlisle's cheap sense of philosophy would make things perfectly clear for the young mercenary:  _a chain is no stronger than its weakest link_ , he would repeat over and over.

Yet Erron knew he was no link. He was a mere adjacent actor participating in their affairs. The minute things were about to blow back in their faces they would cut him loose: the branded soldier would take the blame and the big fishes would remain untouched.

Dispossessed of any other choice, he ultimately accepted their terms and understood that the job they had for him, to become the gun for hire they needed, could actually prove useful in time. Even if they weren't giving him any money they were allowing his skills to be perfected – and that could only be seen as positive progress for him.

As the jobs began to pile up upon his shoulders, new ideas began to form inside his mind. He was now sure of two things: he was getting really good at his job, more than that – he was getting  _disturbingly_  good at it, and he wanted to make a living out of it. He stayed with them for a couple more months only to realize that he could never get to make a living out of it while staying under their suffocating wings. He wanted to fly solo. He wanted to become a lone wolf.

The last couple of weeks he got to spend with Carlisle and his men were also the most enjoyable ones: two very interesting jobs had presented themselves – the happy young widow who had just poisoned her fourth husband, and the pharmacist that had earned himself a fortune by trading expired medicines for weapons. Yet that morning, as he unfolded the piece of paper that Carlisle had slid across the table, he knew that that particular job was meant to be the last one.

He knew that after pulling the trigger on that unfortunate next target he would not return.

Closure and freedom were finally smiling back at him.

"Aren't you curious, my birthday boy?" Carlisle asked. "Come on, unfold the damn thing already."

 _Nathaniel Taggart_.

"Your next target is a man named Nathaniel Taggart, a retired banker from Arroya. According to our accounts, retirement should have impoverished the man yet the bastard's richer than ever," Carlisle explained.

"Ever heard about savings?" Erron asked, raising an eyebrow. He could never bring himself to defend a man like Nathaniel but at least he felt compelled to know.

"Yes, boy, I have. But we're facing fraud and misappropriation of funds here, so… happy birthday,  _mercenary_."

They sent him on his way back to his hometown on that very same day. Arroya seemed alien now, as if the years he had spent in that godforsaken town had been nothing but a very elaborate tale his brain had manufactured for him. The Taggart house still had its windows bricked up so, instinctively, he decided to go to the house that Amanda and the barber had shared during their brief marriage.

Eavesdropping from the corner, Erron heard a woman leaving the house. As she walked in his direction, the gun for hire greeted her. She was a nurse.

"I'm looking for Mr. Nathaniel Taggart. Do you know him?" The treacherous mercenary asked.

"I'm his nurse," she said, "you look familiar, boy."

"I'm an old friend of the family," Erron explained, "now that I'm back in Arroya, I'm visiting all those friends I haven't seen in a while."

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be delighted to see you!" The nurse exclaimed. "He's been so lonely ever since the accident."

Erron's confused expression must have been clear enough for the woman to understand that he had no clue about Nathaniel's misfortune.

"He fell off a horse," she explained, "It’s his spine… he can't walk, boy."

The news clicked inside his head as every new piece of information slid into place for him to understand what had happened: Nathaniel wasn't that old to be retired yet, even if seven years had passed since their last encounter. The accident and his subsequent motor disability had pushed him into seclusion. A handicapped person was meant to lose most of their money – doctors, treatments, nurses, and medicines weren't exactly cheap or easy to afford. Yet the man had somehow gotten richer, no wonder his name had caught Carlisle's attention.

"I'm in a rush now, but let me at least open the door for you, boy. I'm sure he'll be happy to see you." The nurse grabbed Erron by the arm and led him back to the house. She opened the door for him and patted his shoulder slightly. "He can get cranky, so please try to understand." With that she left, leaving the boy alone in the crescendo of evening darkness and closed curtains.

He went upstairs, looking for the man – as he ventured his body in the dimly lit corridor, he heard Nathaniel's voice guiding him.

"You out there, Rose?"

The boy followed the sound until he found the retired banker – sitting up on his bed, his arms crossed over his chest.

"I'm not Rose," Erron said, his baritone voice wasn't entirely familiar. He opened the curtains to let the light in: he needed Nathaniel to see who he was,  _who he had become_.

"You," the man said, a soft chuckle escaping from his bitter lips.

"Me."

"Rose!" Nathaniel yelled.

"She was in a rush – but she thought you would be pleased to see me. Now tell me, Nathaniel," Erron said menacingly, as he sat down on the bed, closing in on the helpless man: " _Are you pleased to see me?_ "

The man flinched – but he knew he had nowhere to go.

"Where's Amanda?" Erron demanded. He was supposed to kill the bastard and leave yet her image invading his thoughts seemed tempting enough to delay the inevitable.

"I thought she was _with you_ \- she ran away, boy. She was lookin' for you," Nathaniel informed him, surprise leaving him as seconds went by. "Poor little minx – I take it she didn't find you, then."

The boy rose up from the bed and let his fingers caress the trigger of his gun.

"You know boy, what happened between us – it wasn't personal," Nathaniel said, embracing the fact that he was facing his very last moments.

"It was  _very_  personal to me, Nathaniel."

"The barber, boy… the barber was loaded. I learned about his true financial position while I was working at the bank. But there's more: have you ever been to a high-society cocktail? To those people, the man sitting on their money is like their fucking priest. People trusted me, they told me things – and one of the things they told me was that the barber was sick," Nathaniel explained. "I just did my math, boy: the man was rich, and he was about to die. The stupid girl should have waited, the man didn't last long. She would have been free  _and_  rich but no, she  _loved_ you, the stupid girl  _loved_  you, so she went after you. When the barber died she was long gone, so all his money ended up in my hands."

Erron understood then that the banker hadn't been stained with the indelible marks of fraud or misappropriation of funds – the barber had no family other than Amanda and her father. He had just crafted a plan that, in the end, had proved itself to be more beneficial for him than what he had initially imagined.

"I came back here last year, I went to the Wise Bird and asked for her and they told me that the barber was dead and that she had run away with a soldier," Erron remembered.

"Jacob's nephew didn't know shit back then and he still doesn't know shit now," Nathaniel whispered. "When the old man died he took over the saloon – but the place had already changed. Without your mom, without Good Old Jacob… it was never the same. Anyway, as I said before, it wasn't personal, kid. I could have never thought she would fall for you; you were a threat, I had to keep you away from her. I did everything in my power to keep you apart, I even  _fucked_  your mother, for God's sake, boy!"

Infuriated, Erron slapped the man hard in the face – a whimsical line of red appeared then, as it traveled from the corner of Nathaniel's mouth.

"You said they saw you as a  _priest_ ," the blinded mercenary spat as he lifted his hand. "Then forgive me  _father_ , for what I am about to do."

Everything he had lost, he had lost it because of that man's unscrupulous greed. In the path of solitude and desperation, he was about to travel for the rest of his days, the irony would chase him unceasingly: that very same original greed would become a part of him; it would define him.

Nathaniel's greed would become, in time, the seed of Erron's greed.

"It's not my fault she came back, you must have done something wrong, boy, you must have hurt her,” Nathaniel yelled, desperate. "It's not my fault you couldn't keep her by your side."

Confused, Erron lowered his weapon.

"Amanda ran away  _twice_ , boy. The first time she escaped it had only been a few months after their marriage. I don't know what she was expecting to do: a brat with no money… good luck with that. I thought she had found you then, but then she came back. Don't blame me for your own shortcomings, kid. If you hurt her and she chose to return to the place where she belonged that's on you."

"She never found me."

"When she returned, she had changed. It pained me to see that look on her eyes – of complete frustration. So I stood up for her. I quieted their voices by telling people that she had gone seeking a cure for her husband. I did my best as a parent, boy: she needed time, I gave it to her. Can you imagine the things they said about her? That she was a cold-hearted bitch, capable of abandoning her dying husband. That she was a whore,  _your_  whore," Nathaniel's enraged voice screamed. "I knew she would come back, I always knew you weren't man enough for her. I knew she couldn't stay with you: you were a soldier, you had nothing left to lose, you wanted to die but she… she had _everything_ to lose… and she's always been a coward. The second she smelled the danger the brat was back. But then she ran away a second time - the barber was dying and the accident had crippled me; suddenly she had become a slave for us. Can't really blame her for running away that second time though: her mother had filled her head with tales of princesses and eternal, tragic love. She woke up one morning and we had turned her into a nurse."

Unable to listen to the stories of that bitter man anymore, Erron's bullet silenced him.

Nathaniel's eyes gradually lost focus until he was nothing but the memory of a withered soul.

Erron closed the curtains and left, finally free from Arroya's bindings.

* * *

The shadows clouded his naked face. Revisiting his past would always leave him breathless, subjugated by an ancient hunger that could never be fully satiated. His 23rd birthday had been his own emancipation letter, signed with the blood of those who had chosen to put chains around his wrists.

"I came back to Brenham that night and killed that Carlisle bastard and the few men that were still with him. Then I grabbed my brown box of memories, packed my bags and left." He looked down as he remembered. "Consider yourself lucky, Henry – this is a story I haven't told many people. It's not that I don't like it – in fact, I'm rather proud of it. But when these things happened everyone I cared about was already gone so I really had no one to share my story with."

He stood up and retreated to the darker side of his cell.

"No, Henry, I don't know if I'm supposed to be the soldier that ran away with her. I can only wish – I mean,  _I am_  the soldier, but she never found me. Guess she ran away to find me and when she didn't, she returned. I like to think that the second time she ran away, she did so to find herself. That's what I would have done in her place."


	27. The Invisible Woman Walks towards the Light

Arc III

Chapter XXVII

**The Invisible Woman Walks Towards the Light**

* * *

  _"But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair."_

— Haruki Murakami

* * *

_[8 months and 3 weeks later]_

"Are you bored, Zar?"

The gradual lack of activity was finally getting the best of her. At first, it had felt nice; finding some spare time after such difficult times. But now that the attack was nothing but a sad memory and the air wasn't as tense as it had been before, all activity in the Barristers' office had gone back to normal: a slow lethargy of bureaucrats and yellowish papers gathering dust and getting systematically forgotten one after the other.

Nothing had happened ever since the destruction of the Marketplace. Nothing at all.

No protests, no picketers to block the streets, no new bellicose pamphlets.

The attackers were still out there, that much was true. Yet the nearly mystical halo of silence that had engulfed them all had been enough to bury them under the treacherous winds of passive acceptance.

Sheltered in the obscure subterfuges of secrecy, the remaining and still unsatisfied fractions of Rebel-Seekers were still beating like an old, battered heart that refused to give up. But time had seemingly washed them all away with plans and strategies meant to calcine the whole city with the suffocating heat of exaggerated security.

Overprotection was the chosen alternative to stop the terrorizing waves of horror that had painted the streets red. And now that the Earthrealmers were gone and the raids had ceased, there wasn't much for Zarrabayeusse to do during her working hours.

She massaged her temples as a timid sigh escaped her lips – a mere sign of frustration, nothing more than that.

"You know," Yvo began, a half smile curling up his lips, "I hired you because I was in need of a good assistant, and you've gotten really good at your job. But as boring as these days might feel for us, you need to understand something: if this office is quiet, that's actually good news."

The woman smiled in return, her features warming up slowly.

"I know – we've come a long way and all those hard working hours, all that tension… it's not that I miss any of that craziness, don't get me wrong, it's just..." she paused, unable to find the words she was looking for.

"Complete stillness can be as exasperating as not getting a single second to catch your breath, I know, dear," the barrister helped her. He stood up and picked the last tower of files that was still resting on his unusually clean desk.

"I'm going to take these to the archives now, dear. I'll be back in a minute," the old man informed her as he reached for the door.

"Yvo, hold on," Zarrabayeusse said as she stood up as well and walked towards the man. "I've been thinking – since we got nothing to do now anyway, maybe we can revisit Erron's case, see if there's something we can do to help him."

Yvo sighed as his short arms rested the files back on his desk.

"Trust me, dear – everything that could be done to help him, I already did. Sometimes I think I did more than enough for that man."

The woman agreed in complete silence as she nodded, yet the urgency seemed powerful enough to compel her to do more:  _more than enough_  was simply not enough for her anymore.

It had been almost two years since Erron's incarceration and time had become a crucial factor in her lonely crusade. Of course, she understood that her husband's fate had been attenuated by Yvo's clever strategies yet the fuss that the corrupted enforcer had caused when he became a prisoner had periled little by little – the attacks had done its part but now the fragile peace encompassing the city seemed as menacing as a black void gravitating towards them. Erron's imprisonment was not newsworthy anymore.

A part of her was worried about the outcome of popular oblivion. They didn't talk about him anymore; even the tasteless jokes and chants ridiculing the ex-Earthrealmer had ceased to exist.

"You know there's an option for parole, dear – if he behaves, in little more than three years he can be a free man again," Yvo tried to reassure her, sensing her discontent.

Zarrabayeusse shook her head – three more years seemed like an unbearable eternity.

"Three more years, Zar. They'll be gone in the blink of an eye, you'll see." Yvo patted her shoulder: he could understand her desperation. She had learned the secret nooks and crannies of the law; she had even learned every single legal short cut used by the barristers but there was nothing left to do to help Black: and the fact that he was still alive was the biggest proof of that.

"I don't know if he has three years," the woman let out softly. "He's been forgotten."

"Maybe that's a good thing," Yvo acknowledged. "People weren't happy when the Kahn decided to kill M'horel and spare your husband's life. Maybe their oblivion is not such a bad thing."

The image of Henry invaded her thoughts: that corpse was the embodiment of the true consequences of being left behind.

"Maybe you should go visit him," Zarrabayeusse suggested. "See him with your own eyes – understand what I'm talking about."

The barrister narrowed his eyes as he sat back down. He stretched one of his arms and cupped Zar's hands with his.

"What's troubling you, dear?"

_Where to begin?_

"He's all alone, Yvo,” she said, “Worse than that: there's a dead body down there, he even gave it a name:  _Henry_. He talks to him, tells him things…"

"Wait – there's a dead body occupying one of the cells?" Yvo interrupted her. "No wonder you are worried, dear. Thanks for letting me know, I'll make sure it is removed immediately."

"No, that's not…" she paused, realizing that the whole  _Henry_  situation had gotten out of hand. "There's more: if I myself don't get him his dinner every night he doesn't eat at all; the guards are not feeding him. His personal hygiene is far from acceptable…"

"Hygiene is very important to us, especially when it concerns the wellbeing of a man who used to be an official employee of the Palace – your husband gets his weekly showers in the communal bath, dear," the barrister interrupted her again.

"Yes…" Zarrabayeusse retorted, raising a suspicious eyebrow. "I kind of assumed that's where his weekly set of new bruises is coming from."

"Zar, your husband's in prison. Prisons are not luxurious, prisons are not opulent," Yvo explained, trying to talk some sense into the worried wife.

"Even in prison he's still a citizen – he still has rights," the woman demanded.

"I'll tell you what, dear," the barrister began as he reached for the bottom drawer of his desk, "since you weren't there during the hearing, I'll give you your husband's file – read it thoroughly: it contains a copy of your marriage certificate, the transcription of every single word that was said during that day inside the Throne Room, my personal notes, words from different witnesses and the final verdicts." He produced a brown folder and handed it to her. "You'll see that there's nothing else for us to do."

The man stood up again. "I'm having a meeting with the Emperor tomorrow morning – I'll let him know about Erron's complete state of isolation, this dead body you just informed me about and his lack of sustenance. I'm not making any promises, dear, but I'll try my best."

Zarrabayeusse whispered her gratitude as the Palace Barrister finally abandoned the office.

Alone with the files, the woman began to appreciate Yvo's clever allegations: his strategy had indeed helped Erron by counterpointing malice aforethought and self-defense. He had mitigated Black's punishment by villainizing the fallen Rebel-Seeker while also managing to support the Kahn's figure in the process – she understood then, that no matter how upset the emperor had gotten after hearing about Black's actions, he himself had  _chosen_  Erron – an Earthrealmer – to be one of his closest enforcers: Erron couldn't die; his death would have compromised Kotal's judgment, the citizens would have doubted his figure.

Yvo's plans had kept the gunslinger alive as an attempt to legitimize the Kahn's choice: had they chosen to kill the mercenary, the Khan would have been wrong in the first place, back when he decided to hire him. But by keeping Erron alive, they had balanced the scales in their own favor. The ex-Earthrealmer had lost his way, it had been his own fault, not the emperor's – they could still reform him; the formidable soldier that the Kahn had initially seen in him could still be retrieved from his own mistakes and corruption.

Her recollections from that day were vague and blurry – not only she had been attacked by M'horel the night before but they had even chosen to expose her weaknesses back then: her emotions had blinded her, desperation and sadness had made it nearly impossible for the woman to stay calm. Now, reading Yvo's recollected documents seemed like experiencing a freshly formed memory from a very distant time.

According to the notes, Erron wasn't eligible for trial – yet there had been a trial, nonetheless. Yvo's hand could still be seen through the paperwork: he had done a truly remarkable job. Kotal himself had played his part with the prestige of a professional: they had surprised him by uncovering the Rebel-Seekers syndicate, they had come clean about their operations and the very fact that they existed, even if up until that moment they had been forced to move and operate underground. Yet the ruler of Outworld had prevailed, legitimizing their existence by dismantling them publicly, a move that – now seen through the distance of time – seemed far from bold or even appropriate.

Those people had been looking for reassurance and, in return, they were neglected. Both brothers were gone, the entire initiative had been terminated and the man who had exposed them – Erron Black – was still alive.

The emperor had chosen  _him_  over his own people. A foreign, treacherous outlander that had stained their streets with such unscrupulous, cold-blooded ways. A mercenary; nothing but a lackluster gun for hire – they had lost, and that man had been victorious.

Zarrabayeusse sighed as she understood that what had begun like a crime had ended as yet another politically correct attempt to maintain the established order that Kotal's rule had imprinted all over the realm. Both men had suffered the consequences: one had died, and the other had been confined to complete isolation. Even if it was obvious now that Erron had gotten the upper-hand during  _and_  after the trial, his so-called victory now seemed empty and pointless.

She kept on reading anyway, even if a part of her had already been convinced that Yvo was right: he had done everything in his power to help her husband.

"Did you find anything?" The barrister asked her as he stepped inside the office but the woman shook her head in pensive silence. "You had to see it with your own eyes, dear."

"There are things that I don't understand – why did you choose to put Ferra in such a cruel position if you disregarded everything she said in the end? That was unnecessary," Zarrabayeusse concluded bitterly. "And the woman, the Earthrealmer; why hiding her?"

Even though she knew the woman had not died in the fire, she was certain that the only answer to her question was deeply related to the very notion of politics.

Yvo shrugged, as his lips offered her a soft grin.

"You know our history with Earthrealm is far from noble – over the years our Emperor has tried to build new bridges meant to replace the old ones – the ones that Shao Kahn and Mileena had chosen to burn down. Both Kano and the dead doctor seemed like threats back then – that's why the Kahn chose not to divulge information about them," the barrister moved closer to his desk and placed the receipts he was carrying from the archives. "Discretion about these individuals comes without saying, of course."

The woman nodded in silence.

"We've come a long way, my dear – like you yourself told me only moments ago. Let Kano be nothing but a ghost, and let that woman rest underneath the cross your husband crafted to honor her," Yvo sentenced as he took off his coat.

"What cross?"

"Oh, it stroked me as a surprise as well but then again, I know nothing about Earthrealm's funerary rituals," the man explained as he sat down. "After Pareedis killed the doctor – and your husband killed Pareedis, Erron buried the woman in the backyard of his cabin. I don't remember if he buried her after the fire or before the fire, but I guess that doesn't really matter anymore. During the hearing, your husband explained that he had placed a wooden cross over her grave; it's something they do in Earthrealm. I believe it's a religious thing."

Of course, he could have done that to cover his own tracks – to protect the woman, even to make sure no one would go looking for her. She reread the notes, trying to find a mention of said cross yet the words were vague: it was clear they weren't familiar with the true meaning behind such an idol.

Zarrabayeusse pondered in silence as the image of a precarious wooden cross set on her mind – she tried to hold on to her own benevolent theories; maybe the cross had been a mere decoy meant to fool them all.

But as much as she would have wanted her elucubrations to be true, she knew there was another option.

If the woman hadn't died in the fire, if Pareedis' body had been found in the Marketplace, if they had decapitated M'horel – who was buried under the cross?

The feeling was unsettling – he had looked her in the eyes and had assured her that the boy hadn't died in that cabin; he had told her that he was clueless about Aalem's current location. If her nephew's body was the one there, buried under the cross… she had not a single trace of doubt inside her mind: her love would not suffice, the feelings she had for him would not be enough to spare that man from all her anger.

"What is it, dear?" Yvo asked, noticing her eyes were slowly drifting away, her mind caught up in deep thought.

"Nothing, I…" She tried to keep a straight face but it was impossible: the doubt was already an appendix of her being, cohabiting with her demons inside that part of her that had always been a prisoner of her own lack of resolution. Unable to go on, the woman stood up and left the office, consternation now showing all over her visage: she couldn't stay there, wondering who was there under the cross,  _if_  there was someone buried there at all.

She had already spent way too much time seeking answers from her husband. If she wanted the truth, she would have to uncover it herself.

* * *

The place was unfamiliar and far from welcoming. The hostile weather, in perfect concordance with the eerie landscape, were factors deteriorating her trust – yet she had gotten so far in her personal quest for a resolution that turning back now seemed absolutely out of the question.

Many doubts and fears had accompanied her during her journey: ghosts of her own past. What if Aalem was the one buried under the cross? What would that say about her? That she had been a bad aunt, a scarce replacement for the boy's mother? That she had misplaced her trust by confiding in a heartless mercenary?

The prospect of not finding her nephew seemed equally devastating. Not only she would have doubted her own husband for nothing – the boy would still be gone, the ashes of that tender little kid that she still held dear inside her heart would surely vanish in time; she would be left wondering what could have happened to such a noble spirit, what could have been so wrong, so bad, to cause him to leave it all behind - his home, his mentor, his very essence.

The ruins, displayed before her emerald eyes for her to see first-hand the true consequences of terror, were enough for her to shiver. Her sweaty hands were stiff and numb; the tremor all over her skin could not be contained anymore: those ruins were a completed symbolism of the strained bond that had always connected her to the gunslinger.

That destroyed cabin had been the place her husband had chosen in order to protect  _another_  woman.

The wooden cross appeared rather easily as she ventured her feet across the charred shelves and scorched pieces of wood and metal – a few steps to the left, right after the black spot where the foundations met the rocky trail leading all the way up to the crystalline, cold stream cascading down the mountain top. She walked slowly to it, her flat shoes trying hard to keep a steady balance.

She examined it briefly as her hands caressed the weathered material. Blood, dirt and soil became the same thing, then, in the communion of her awaken determination and the desperation driving her hands. Frantically, her fingers began to dig through the dirt and the stones – the blinding, excruciating pain that should have restricted her was the very fuel motioning her digits.

The deteriorated bedsheet confirmed that something – someone – was indeed buried under that cross.

The crimson streams of blood pouring from underneath her fingernails soon polluted the cloth yet its stains got lost in a helpless shade of red slowly fading into brown; the sight of dried blood and oblivion, the sight of yesterday's violence.

She removed her hair from her face, the dirt contaminating her features.

It was time to finally uncover the truth.

Unable to hold back the tears any longer, Zarrabayeusse cursed under her breath as she closed her eyes: her fingers broke through the bedsheet virulently, the torment in her eyes compelling her irises to take a look: only dirty bones met her stupefied gaze – only bones and a golden ring. Dexitis' ring, the one L'ampaghna had passed onto their son only a few weeks after the blacksmith's physical disappearance.

Exhausted, and feeling as if her whole body was about to fade in the wind, the woman had finally found the truth.

Her nephew was never going to return.

Her nephew was dead.


	28. In Oculus Tempestatis

Arc III

Chapter XXVIII

**In Oculus Tempestatis**

* * *

  _“Tonight I can write the saddest lines._  
_Write, for example, "The night is starry_  
_and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."_  
_The night wind revolves in the sky and sings._  
_Tonight I can write the saddest lines._  
_I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too._  
_Through nights like this one I held her in my arms._  
_I kissed her again and again under the endless sky._  
_She loved me, sometimes I loved her too._  
_How could one not have loved her great still eyes._  
_Tonight I can write the saddest lines.”_

Pablo Neruda – Poem XX

* * *

 When the careless guard saw that woman, he instinctively understood that getting in her way was not an option.

She looked deranged, dirty and disheveled, just as if she had been walking through hell; her body now bewildered and corrupted by the dancing flames of sin – her skin, covered in brimstone, and her eyes – emerald whirlpools fumbling towards a void so dark, not even the devil himself could have redeemed her.

Her reddened eyes, adorned with several tears and red lines, were lighthouses on fire. Her hair, loose and untidy – the palpitating shape of her veins showing underneath the soft skin of her hands.

Hadn't that man known her from before, he would have thought she was a runaway lunatic, trying to fit in amongst others in a world already filled with countless lunatics.

The guard took a step backwards to let her in yet the woman approached him and snatched the handful of keys the young man had tried to conceal in his back pocket. He didn't even try to protest; those incandescent eyes were telling him that all lines had already been crossed.

"Don't worry," Zarrabayeusse informed him, "I won't let him out –  _I need in_."

Her voice had changed, the man noticed in a heartbeat, the worried wife was no more. All that was left of her was a smoldering shadow buried deep inside those stranded eyes of hers. The colors of her voice, no longer warm neither caring, had been quieted by the shushing impersonality of those who simply don't care anymore.

She had wandered the city streets all day long not really pursuing a clear destination yet her feet kept marching anyway, as if stopping could end her. She just couldn't go back to work, couldn't go back to the Palace – the place she despised the most, the lugubrious scenario of all her sorrow and anguish, yet she knew she had to see  _him_.

Confront him. Unleash her demons in order to asphyxiate his own.

There was another option, of course: pack up her bags and leave everything and everyone behind just like she had done so many years ago when his unloving ways had detached her from everything and everyone she cared about. But she just couldn't afford to do that; not now – couldn't afford to let him advance, like he always did, and contaminate the little remains of life she still had.

She had let him advance way too much, way too far. No more; her passivity wouldn't get her anywhere now, there was no one to fight for now – only herself.

She stepped inside his cell as the gunslinger turned and tossed in his sleep. As she walked towards his cot, she removed his blanket and shook one of his arms rather violently. A confused Black stared intently at her, pupils swimming rapidly into focus. Her stranded look should have been a clue for him to stay quiet; those irascible eyes of hers should have been enough to warn him. Yet the man exhaled, still too absorbed in his own predicament, stretched his arms and asked:

"Where is my dinner?"

Zarrabayeusse slapped him hard in the face, the scorching marks of her digits now imprinted vividly across his bony cheek.

"Where is Aalem?" She retorted, voice cold and distant.

The mercenary rolled his eyes and cursed under his breath. He hadn't eaten in two days; he didn't have the energy to go through yet another one of his wife's witch hunts.

Silently, the woman got on her knees before him, sliding her fingers across his bare shoulders.

"I will ask you one more time – where is Aalem?"

* * *

"Sir, with all due respect, I think we need to talk about Black," Yvo whispered and the Kahn looked over his shoulder – the meeting had been a great success; his strategies had prevailed and now he wanted to savor the sweet elixir of tranquility.

"Maybe some other time," Kotal suggested quietly, brushing off the memory of the ungrateful ex-Earthrealmer as a half-smile took over his face, then he turned around once again to say goodbye to the rest of the barristers already exiting the Throne Room.

Yet the Official Palace Barrister moved closer to his leader, his forearm already brushing the Kahn's broad back.

"Now,"

Kotal took a deep breath but kept on smiling anyway.

"What is it?" The emperor asked, standing imperturbable even if the shape of the gunslinger had already begun to reappear in the theater of his mind.

"Zarrabayeusse has informed me of some rather…  _disturbing_  news, sir," Yvo said in a low tone, smiling as well at his colleagues. Formalities and appearances, the smoke and mirrors of politics, were the silent pencil sketching all of their interactions with dedication and precision – at least, while in public.

"It's only natural," the Kahn tried to dismiss him, "the woman's his wife and he is in prison – of course, she's going to worry about him."

"That's exactly what I thought – until the guards confirmed her words," the barrister was on his tiptoes now, reaching for the Kahn's ear to make sure their words will remain a secret.

Kotal remained calm as he waved goodbye to the departing barristers yet deep down he knew the day had already been ruined: coming from Black, he knew he was in for yet another unpleasant surprise.

"Wait until we are alone," the emperor finally said, as the timid grin adorning his lips quickly began to disappear.

* * *

"I told you, I don't know," Black said as he put on his tunic but she slapped him across the face again, even harder this time.

"How can you not know?  _You buried him_."

Black jumped off the cot and glued his back to the nearest wall. The woman followed him, the deranged look in her eyes tormenting him like never before.

" _In the backyard_ , that should have been your answer  _the first time I asked_."

He eyed her speculatively: she wasn't just theorizing out loud; she was certain.

"Come on, now, Erron – did you really think I would have been mad at you?" She raised an eyebrow, the corners of her mouth twitching as she cornered him against the wall with both her arms. "You had already killed Dexitis because you fucked my sister. Then you didn't kill my sister yourself, but you were the reason why she committed suicide so, you kind of had some intellectual responsibility for her death. Now the boy is dead as well, I wouldn't have been surprised, dear; not in the slightest. You had killed my entire family already, my love! One more relative to add to the list wouldn't have made such a big difference."

Yet it did – it made all the difference.

"Well yes, you had promised me and Dexitis you would take care of him but that was on us, really. Believing in promises from a mercenary? Love, that's wishful thinking!" She smiled, a dark gesture to prove to him that the woman he had known was now long gone.

He fidgeted in silence, yet he didn't even try to break free.

"I didn't kill him," was all he could manage to say.

"How's that phrase you Earthrealmers say…  _you say tomato, I say tomato_ ," Zarrabayeusse gave him an ironic, playful chuckle as the man shuddered. "You walked into our lives and Dexitis died, L'ampaghna died, I almost died, the boy died – see what I mean? Who cares who killed the boy…"

Yet who killed the boy?

Who  _was_  the murderer?

Black's inner turmoil took him far away from her for a few moments – right back to that night, right back to the cabin.

Who had been the sinister killer?

The Rebel-Seeker who had attacked him? He himself, when he guided the doctor's finger? Or the doctor, the one who had ultimately pulled the trigger, driven by his own desperation?

He had blamed Pareedis for so long that his own denial had prevented him from seeing the evident: he had killed the boy, but he hadn't killed him by pulling the trigger. He had already killed the boy the minute he ordered him to go outside, knowing someone was lurking in the dark, waiting for a chance to strike.

As tears started to stream down his face, the image of Alex invaded his thoughts: he had chosen to remain inside the cabin to protect the woman – yet he ended up abandoning her all the same. Now Aalem's death seemed futile and unforgivable; now those emerald eyes corrupting him were mad dictators eager to see him bleed.

"How did you find out?"

* * *

As the last barrister left the Throne Room, Kotal Kahn tapped Yvo on the shoulder. They walked together around the large wooden table placed in the center of the room until the emperor finally invited the Official Barrister to take a seat by his side.

He exhaled, as his eyes lost focus for a brief instant; his mind already embracing the trouble that was surely about to come his way.

"Now tell me what is it," the Emperor whispered as he came back down to reality, his broad shoulders already feeling a renewed sense of tension. "What is so urgent, so important, that you're willing to ruin this day for me by saying it out loud."

Yvo grinned, tenderly. They had worked so hard to achieve that elusive, desired stability that now it seemed he was about to sin just by opening his mouth.

That day hadn't been any other day.

That day had been the second anniversary of M'horel's execution; the first anniversary of the brutal attack that had destroyed a great part of the city, erasing the Marketplace in the process.

That's why Kotal had gathered all barristers that night, to analyze the outcome of his every security measure – all his strategies had paid off: peace was finally within their reach once more. No suspicious activity had been informed, no raids, no prisoners. The brothers and their black legacy of hatred and violence were finally in the past.

Yet the Official Palace Barrister was willing to talk about the treacherous gunslinger – the thought was unsettling, it still weighed heavily upon the Kahn's shoulders: he had chosen to hire that man and the ex-Earthrealmer had ultimately turned into one of his biggest headaches.

"Zarrabayeusse informed me that the guards are not feeding Black," Yvo began, his tone solemn and serious from the start. "And that's an outrage, sir – if the woman doesn't feed him herself then no one does. I reckon he has been deprived of his freedom and privileges as an Official Enforcer of your Office, but as a naturalized Outworlder, he has rights."

The Kahn took a deep breath yet he couldn't help the feeling of relief suddenly invading him. He had certainly hoped for the worst and Yvo's words were a soothing balm letting him know that things weren't as bad as he had anticipated in his mind. Of course, the Kahn wasn't a stranger to the deplorable conditions of the Maximum Security Pavilion of the Palace dungeon, he knew about the indolence and the inclemency shown by the guards and the disrespectful ways in which they treated the prisoners – yet Erron Black had once been a figure of authority, a representative of his Royal Office. The man had been convicted for abusing his power – now he couldn't allow common prison guards to do the same thing.

"I'll make sure he receives all his meals," the emperor ensured the barrister as he placed both his hands on the table.

"Thank you, sir," Yvo let out softly. "But there's more."

The Emperor shrugged, his incipient content getting washed away by the barrister's paused elocution. Ever the eloquent man, Kotal slid his fingers across the table and sighed.

"There's always something more, am I right?" He chuckled softly, almost giving up to the saddening acknowledgment that his triumphant day was indeed about to be ruined by the mercenary's ruthless nuisances.

"There is a body, sir."

"What?" The emperor's eyes widened in surprise. "Where?"

The invisible line connecting an imprisoned Black with yet another dead body was a very thin one – the connections in the emperor’s mind, virulently reaching spheres and shapes strongly demarcated by Kotal's most private fears, were blinding him already. He cursed under his breath, already regretting his benevolence: he should have ended Black when he got the chance – that treacherous Earthrealm scum was clearly not done yet, he was a loose end now, and the emperor was beginning to feel that unbearable headache represented in the shape of that man.

"In the dungeon, sir," Yvo explained quickly, noticing the Kahn's elucubrations were taking him too far from the actual situation. "Our guards forgot to remove the body after the prisoner died, I'm afraid."

Relief filled the emperor's eyes as his gaze softened.

"Remove it already - you know you don't need my permission to do that."

It still struck him as a surprise, even after all his years in the Throne, how bureaucracy always seemed to get in the way of the most obvious decisions. The barristers and enforcers – no matter how eloquent or clever they could be, would not move a finger without consulting their decisions with the emperor himself. Maybe it was a defensive reflex that still remained after Shao Kahn's unruly tyranny – the omnipotent strength of their ex-leader still resonating inside their heads, filling them up with the incommensurable fear of punishment and blood.

Things had changed – yet politics were still politics. And fear was still fear. Those concepts weren't about to change any time soon, no matter the name of the authority sitting on the Outworld Throne.

"I'll ask the guards to get it removed in the morning," the barrister acknowledged.

"Is that all?" Kotal asked, tired yet motivated to discover if Yvo's concerns were nothing more than little bumps along the road, bumps that could be easily left behind. Yet the barrister shook his head rather pensively – of course, there was more.

"Black has been  _bonding_  with this rotting corpse, I'm afraid."

The emperor stood up abruptly, his menacing shadow towering over the bearer of such bad news.

"Are you implying that one of my best enforcers is losing his mind?" One of his fists fell violently against the wooden table, the empty cups and glasses all clicked in unison, awaken by the sudden jolt. A corrupted officer was still a recoverable, redeemable man to the eyes of a politician.

A mad man was not.

* * *

Zarrabayeusse chuckled softly as she leaned in to smell the fear impregnated all over his skin.

"Does it really matter, love?"

Of course, it did matter – Kotal Kahn was the only one other than Black himself who knew the boy was dead. The mercenary still remembered their last encounter: bittersweet, and corrupted by an obscene amount of political subtext, over a year ago.

Even though there was no need for the Kahn to betray him in such questionable fashion, Black could already feel the blood boiling inside his veins – he just couldn't see the Kahn's reasons, his ideology, his pertinence on the matter. He could only envision the cold stare of his former employer; that mocking demeanor letting him know that even after spending over two years in prison, even after being erased from the surface of a world that used to be his, he still was nothing but a disposable pawn in the emperor's intricate chess board.

"You've always underestimated me, dear," the woman said as enticingly as possible. She slid one of her hands under his tunic and caressed his genitals – a gesture so unexpected, so alien, it only made him flinch under her touch. "I work for the barristers now, I have my resources."

"Did Kotal tell you?" He knew he was playing with fire yet the doubt was not about to leave him be. He needed to know if that man had crossed the very last line there was to be crossed – the very limit of his privacy; the very limit of his patience.

Stranded and bewildered, Zarrabayeusse opened her mouth but no sound came out – the Kahn  _knew_ , she reckoned. As she tried to regain her composure, the hand still cupping his manhood closed violently on Black's organs – those soft fingers of hers were now a tight grip causing him a sort of pain he had never known.

"I was actually trying to help you, I wanted to help you out," she began, now yelling. "I read the transcription of your trial – you mentioned a wooden cross but if the doctor was still alive, then who was buried under the crucifix? Or was it just a decoy?"

Gasping for air and feeling his knees getting weaker by the second, the mercenary finally understood that it had been his entire fault. He had spent way too long trying to blame others for his own misfortune: the Rebel-Seekers, the Kahn… Now, with his back against the wall and his manhood mercilessly subjugated by Zar's hand, the obvious seemed almost ridiculous.

He had killed Aalem in order to protect the doctor.

He had lied to the Kahn in order to protect the doctor.

But he had abandoned the doctor, and the results of his own sacrifice were still haunting him today: the brave mercenary was nothing but a frightened shadow now, afraid of his own past, afraid of a solitary future.

He had lied to his own wife in order to save his own skin from that impertinent loneliness threatening his sanity. Now it was too late to reckon that, with her by his side, he would have never been alone. But the layers of his own cobweb of lies had been ripped apart – he was going to lose her but that wasn't the worst part: he had corrupted her; those belligerent emerald eyes of hers were the living proof of that. He had finally corrupted the one that had always been loyal to him – and as intransitive as his love for her was, her imminent abandonment was enough for his heart to shatter into a million incandescent pieces.

* * *

"I cannot say he's losing his mind, my Kahn," Yvo retorted quickly, his words were defensive and nearly desperate. "But Zarrabayeusse is positive that a complete state of isolation will alter his train of thought in time – if we don't do something about it, he  _will_  succumb to insanity, eventually."

The Kahn stood up, feeling helpless and responsible for Black's current predicament. He stared silently out the window, pensive and absorbed.

"Black has never had to face such a long term apart from the rest of civilization – and yes, we can say that five years, even ten years is a small amount of time for a man like him. That period of time will become an anecdote for him –  _in time_ , once seen from a comfortable distance. That period behind bars will become a dot in the nearly eternal line of his existence – but that's only going to happen  _tomorrow_ , sir. Today is still  _today_ ; time doesn't move faster for him – he still is a victim of its inalterable slowness I'm afraid, he still has to live day after day, hour after hour." The barrister looked over his shoulder as he tried to talk some sense into that imperturbable man still standing motionless by the window.

"Maybe it was simply unfortunate timing, you know? That his term in prison coincided with such a remarkable vacancy in our dungeon – we have overlooked that fact, I'm afraid. We simply put him there; we didn't consider the chance that he would be all alone down there – we didn't know," the barrister considered.

"I knew," Kotal said softly, his eyes still glued to the sleepy rooftops watching him from a distance. "I was so angry at him… I knew the pavilion was completely empty.”

"Perhaps removing the corpse might not be as beneficial as Zar thinks," Yvo pondered out loud.

* * *

The agonizing pain he was enduring was only going to get worse in time. The woman applied more pressure as Black closed his eyes and grunted. His legs went numb – it was the stronghold of her body the only thing preventing him from crumbling down. The sensation was blinding – as her hand grew warmer, the feverish organs between his legs became a single amorphous mass and she could feel it as well; the soft and delicate skin she was strangling oh so mercilessly had now become one single, sweaty mess of flesh.

As the mercenary began to breathe through his parted lips, his unexpected torturer twisted her hand, causing the man to cry out loud. The pain was simply too much for him to handle – no bullet, no knife had ever procured such a blinding agony for him.

"The women of your life truly are the weak spots of your filthy being, aren't they? They really do have that much power over you, don't they, dear?" His wife said as his jawline became rigid. "You let him die because you needed to save that Earthrealmer!" She screamed from the top of her lungs as tears began cascading down her swollen cheeks once again – it was the defining torture of her life; to acknowledge herself as the one he could not bring himself to love yet she had accepted that, she had learned how to satiate her feelings with the pitiful crumbs he would throw her way occasionally. She had accepted, long ago, that she wasn't even a consolation prize for him, that she wasn't even a replacement for all those hearts that had tried to tame his indomitable heart yet it was enough for her - to have him from time to time, to be nothing but a legal consort that was entitled to his love only when there wasn't someone better to take her place.

Yet Aalem had been the one to pay the price for all of his misplaced emotions – and that was something she was not willing to forgive.

She had already forgiven him for ruining her sister's marriage – all adults involved in such bitter acts had made their decisions, after all. Aalem had never been given the chance; he was nothing but a silent wild card for Black to protect his temporary queen. Such innocence, such nobleness had been buried in that backyard – along with the very last bastions of her own innocence and nobleness that were now resting right next to her fallen nephew.

With one last squeeze from her hand, she finally let him go and a pained Black fell on his knees as his own hands cupped his genitals almost instinctively; his breathing was harsh, uneven.

"You once said to me, the first time you told me about Amanda – it was  _love at first sight_ ," the woman recalled as she backed away from him. "You and me, it was  _hate_  at first sight," the tears running down her face were not enough for Zarrabayeusse to erase his decaying image from her eyes, her sorrow now unleashed and attempting to soar like a hurt bird that tries to fly even with its wings clipped. "It should have stayed that way."

She left him there, crawling on the floor, paralyzed by such a sharp pain. He would be alright in time, she knew, yet once that physical pain had receded he would have to face another pain; a much obscurer, denser pain: his solitude, the image of himself on his knees, alone and forsaken by the only one who actually cared, the only one he should have protected.

As his eyes swam into focus, he caught a glimpse of her shadow walking away from him, out of his cell and into the dimly lit corridor. He closed his reddened eyes again, feeling heartbroken and defenseless like an abandoned child.

That was solitude.

Real, actual solitude.

The mercenary caressed the dirty floor of his cell as he mourned his dying love – a love he had never reciprocated; a love that had kept him alive.

He had betrayed the one that had only offered him her endless pools of love and devotion. Now it was much too late.

Black closed his eyes as his body caved in to the unbearable pain he was enduring: the truth too evident to be neglected.

She was never coming back.

* * *

The question lingered in the air and hovered between them – unsaid yet present, even palpable for both the emperor and the worried barrister.

"If we remove the corpse, that's it," Yvo said softly, and even if he was well aware that keeping that rotting body was an outrage, he was positive Black's mental condition could only worsen in complete isolation. "Zar told me he even gave it a name –  _Henry_."

"The body can't stay," Kotal sentenced. The sole idea of contemplating the chance of keeping a dead body in order to preserve Black's sanity seemed ridiculous. "Find another way."

Confronting with the Kahn was never easy, yet the barrister stood up and walked towards the emperor: he was fond of Zarrabayeusse, especially now, after spending so many hours together every day. His worry was not only meant to help Black – he wanted to help  _her_.

"He needs company;  _real_  company. Someone to talk to – Zar visits him every night but I fear that's not enough, and I honestly believe that adding such a heavy burden for her to carry all by herself is only going to break her as well. That doesn't sound fair to me, sir; she is a victim. She is doing her best and we are turning our backs on her."

The Kahn nodded in silence as he finally turned around to meet the barrister – it was only natural that such a lonely man like Yvo would develop feelings for such a caring woman like Zarrabayeusse after all. That candor in his eyes was begging him to help her. Kotal grinned tenderly as he placed one of his hands on Yvo's shoulder.

"It really takes a man to try and save a woman that's not even his – to try to see her happy; even if her happiness resides in the arms of another man," Kotal said softly as the barrister lowered his head. "Another man that doesn't even love her back – it really takes a man, my friend."

"A heart can be whimsical," the barrister said after a while in complete silence.

The Emperor chuckled as he walked past Yvo and sat back down by the table. The tension between them had somehow dissipated now. Yvo walked towards the door – always the enabler, never the protagonist; his own sense of humbleness could never allow him to embrace the blinding lights of being in the spotlight.

"I will consider our chances: I will evaluate the situation tonight, then I'll get back to you tomorrow with some viable options for us to solve this delicate situation," Yvo said, his hand already caressing the doorknob. "Yet you have to think, my Kahn – for all I can do is to facilitate mere arrangements for the man but all those arrangements shall be pointless unless you can find the answer to the only question that really matters now: once he serves his term,  _do you want him back_ , sir?"

The Kahn, alone in the growing shadows of the Throne Room, exhaled softly as his eyes unfocused.

The question remained lingering above his troubled head as the barrister exited the room. As his turbulent thoughts began to rain all over his imperturbable body, that simple yet extremely complex question was meant to stay there, hovering near him, filling up the low hours of his night.

The cold night air brushed her skin as the troubled woman walked through the empty streets of Z'unkahrah. She just couldn't go back to the Palace, not now that she had finally found the strength to let him go. The dense clouds of confusion that had blinded her way ever since finding out about Aalem's death were finally dissipating now; only the ethereal and tepid curtain of her own tears remained there, separating her vision from the image of a world that was still spinning relentlessly, completely alien to her sorrow.

She slid her hands inside the pockets of her green cape to find the key to the Barristers' Office – she could surely spend the night there, then ask Yvo for a proper place to stay in the morning. She was determined not to go back to the Palace; everything about that place, every object, every corner had now turned into a deadly beacon of evil light that could remind her of him and of everything he had done to all those people she had loved and lost because of him.

As she walked past the ruins of the place they used to call the Marketplace, the unmistakable laughter of children made her turn around and look over her shoulder. There were two of them, a little boy and an even littler girl.

The woman approached them, as she quickly ran her fingers through her messy hair, trying to look as presentable as possible given her state: if anything, she didn't want to scare them off with her strained appearance, and it was already late for those kids to be outside alone.

"Are you lost?" Zar asked them but the kids kept on laughing, not even caring about the woman. Frustrated, Black's wife leaned in closer to the girl: "you shouldn't be out here all alone at night, where are your parents?"

The girl shrugged rather mindlessly – it was the boy the one who gazed at the woman, eyes inquisitive yet distant. He stretched one of his arms and pointed one tiny finger towards the corner. Zarrabayeusse focused her eyes as she tried to take one good look at the man standing there all by himself.

The figure waved hello at the perplexed woman as the dark shadows of the night embraced him completely. The girl ran away as soon as she noticed the man had seen them talking to a stranger. Yet the boy stayed, his eyes fixed on that gentle woman.

"Is that your father?" Zarrabayeusse asked, beginning to fear for those children.

The boy nodded in silence as he looked down, busying his fingers with a tiny black box. By the time she realized what that box actually was, it was already too late. Kneeling down she took a good look around her shoulder: a rectangular charge had been glued to each of the doors around her; every house in that block was about to blow up.

In a matter of seconds, the boy's hand was pressed hard against the box. The many explosions that followed, one by one roaring like a concatenation of thunders, shook the night in bright colors. The houses crumbled in unison, the choked sounds of agony and desperation were soon buried under an ocean of concrete and bricks.

The boy and Zarrabayeusse were now eternally resting in the cold arms of a broken night. Their bodies bleeding out, tainting the streets with a renewed crimson. The bottom half of that little boy's dead body had been covered by fragments of the houses he himself had destroyed.

A few feet away from him, Zarrabayeusse's body lay on the ground. Her legs, also imprisoned by the deadly rubble. The back of her head, smashed against the concrete.

Peace and protection had turned out to be the empty promises of a cornered emperor. Politics were simply not enough anymore to stop the Rebel-Seekers.

Yet her face had changed, now that those emerald eyes of hers were never going to see the light of day again – a timid smile was curling up her dormant lips, as if relieved from all pain and sorrow, as if accepting the end as the beginning of a new path.

As the patrols and guards entered the scene, the man standing by the corner and the little girl disappeared in the uneasy embrace of the obsidian night. The boy would be another silent victim of their violence, just like Zar.

Alone and in the dark she died.

Because alone and in the dark she had always lived.


	29. Quo Vadis

Arc III

Chapter XXIX

**Quo Vadis**

* * *

  _"Su memoria está compuesta de fragmentos de existencia, estáticos y eternos: el tiempo no pasa, en efecto, entre ellos, y cosas que sucedieron en épocas muy remotas entre sí están unas junto a otras vinculadas o reunidas por extrañas antipatías y simpatías. O acaso salgan a la superficie de la conciencia unidas por vínculos absurdos pero poderosos, como una canción, una broma o un odio común. Como ahora, para ella, el hilo que las une y que las va haciendo salir una después de otra es cierta ferocidad en la búsqueda de algo absoluto, cierta perplejidad, la que une palabras como padre, Dios, playa, pecado, pureza, mar, muerte."_

Ernesto Sábato — Sobre Héroes y Tumbas

* * *

_A man of nostalgia, religion, love…_

_A father…_

_A widower._

Black cupped his face with both his hands as Yvo told him the saddening news about his now ex-wife. The walls of his cell had trembled again the night before but he would have never imagined that the brutal attack was going to take her away from him.

Take her away for good.

The fake marriage that had trapped him as he tried to climb his way to the honeyed zeniths of power and greed was finally over. Yet, far from making him feel at ease, Zarrabayeusse's sudden demise had created a void so dark and menacing inside of him the troubled gunslinger couldn't even breathe.

He was now a free but imprisoned man – but he didn't have the slightest idea of what to do with all that unwanted freedom.

"Arrangements for her funeral had already been made," the barrister informed. "Yet I cannot guarantee you that the Kahn will allow you to attend."

How could he ever bring his tired bones to attend her funeral?

How was he supposed to pay his respects now when he had never shown her the slightest respect while she was still alive?

"Maybe you can ask him for it yourself," the barrister went on, unable to hide his desolation from his bitter intonation. "I just saw him – says he'll be visiting you today."

"I don't want to see him," Black retorted sternly.

"It's not up to you whether you want to see him or not – he is the emperor, and you were one of his closest enforcers. He wants to see you, wants you to accept his heartfelt condolences."

Black walked back to his cot as new shadows entered the pavilion – their footsteps already marching down the corridor, walking past his cell. The mercenary raised his chin as his coffee-colored eyes followed their path.

"Don't worry, they are not here for you," the barrister said calmly. "They are here to remove the body. Emperor's orders." Yvo moved near the door of Black's cell looking down. He stared at the bars in silence as he observed the couple of guards entering Henry's cell.

Both men wrapped the body in a white blanket and left the pavilion as silently as they had arrived.

If only he had had the strength to acknowledge what they were doing… if only he had had the strength to envision himself as a man subjugated by the most asphyxiating of solitudes. They had taken everything and everyone away from him – not even that dead body was allowed to remain there, by his side, not even his forced silence was meant to accompany him during all those insufferable hours of penitence.

Not even a body, not even a  _nobody_.

With a soft  _tsssk_  from his tongue, the barrister brought them both back to the depressing reality of Erron's filthy cell – "I got to go now, boy. Just know that she will be missed – dearly. And all those things that concerned her about you: your hygiene, your mental stability, your diet – I will take care of all those things myself."

It seemed poor and unfulfilling, yet deep down the barrister felt he owed that much to the woman. The nurturing friend he had found in that caring woman was worth the effort - that deteriorated fighter crumbling down before his eyes was reason enough to honor her: if she had cared so much about him, if she had loved him so fiercely – then he was worth the effort as well.

Yvo was still inside Black's cell when the emperor's shadow began to tower over his smaller body.

The barrister turned around and left immediately, understanding that the emperor needed privacy. He hadn't been escorted, after all – it was clear the man had pushed aside the political aspect of his life in order to enter the pavilion as a simple, ordinary man.

The cowboy turned around rather despondently – he had made it abundantly clear that he didn't want to see the Kahn and the emperor sighed soundlessly as he stepped inside the cell and closed the door behind him.

"She was… such a remarkable woman," he began, a little self-indulgently but still sincere and genuine. "A friend to us all – a part of our family," Kotal reflected as a parted, bittersweet smile took over his face.

Sensing no response from the anguished mercenary, Kotal Kahn walked the distance separating his body from Black's and sat down on the cot beside him.

"I have decided, Erron, that Zar's death, as heart-wrenching as it is, cannot blind us from what's going on out there: the Rebel-Seekers are still hunting us, they have not forgotten – they are not going to stop," he began, his voice weak yet serene. "That is why I have decided there shall not be a parole option for you. I know this might be a hard pill for you to swallow – especially now. But I need you to understand that Z'unkahrah has just been attacked for the second time; the atmosphere has been heated up again by those criminals. Three more years will not be enough for them to see you out there again I'm afraid. Your original term was ten years and ten years is the term you shall serve."

Only then Black dared to look inside the Kahn's eyes yet that coffee-colored gaze of his, far from resentful or angry, was full of resignation and sadness. Of course, he understood the situation had changed – yet now, without her, three years or ten years meant the exact same thing for him.

The mercenary swallowed hard as he tried to keep his composure. He nodded in silence as Kotal patted him lightly on the back. Those strong fingers touched little muscle as they traveled across the gunslinger's shoulders – the emperor had seen his deteriorated physical condition over a year ago, the night Black had been forced to visit the Kahn's bedchamber. Yet now, time had piled up upon his already damaged self; Black was thinner than before, weaker even.

"I have been thinking about your situation," Kotal went on as he removed his hand. Not only Black's physique was reason enough for him to worry: his mental state had also been altered by the complete isolation the man had been forced to face. Never the social type, Kotal reckoned, yet locking him up in a room with no windows and no real companion other than a rotting corpse was clearly more than what he could handle. "I've been evaluating some possibilities for you – Yvo suggested we move you to the regular pavilions, he thinks that the company of other inmates can be good for you but I'm not so sure, if I had to be honest. Those people are there because you put them there: they resent you, you wouldn't last a week, _not like this_ …"

Black chuckled involuntarily at the Kahn's rather optimistic train of thought. As he lowered his eyelids and took a deep breath he acknowledged his own impoverished condition: to say that he was not going to last a week was pure wishful thinking. It would only take them a matter of hours to tear apart his body; perhaps the other six days were reserved for more morbid activities regarding his remains – if that was the case, he didn’t want to know.

"I believe you have to stay here – but not like this," Kotal suggested. "You will be allowed to train with the rest of the enforcers on a daily basis. You will act under Reptile's supervision – I'm positive the morning rounds of exercise will do you good. You will have the chance to regain your lost self-confidence, your body will return to its normal shape – you'll regain your strength and your willpower and most importantly, your head will be fueled again."

"And my guns?" Back asked begrudgingly, even if, deep down, he knew the answer already.

"Not a chance," Kotal stated as he shook his head. "You will get out of here, Erron – there's no use in a rusted enforcer. When you leave this place I need you to be the man that you were – socially reformed, of course, but I need that fire of yours to be back. We'll start off easy, but if you behave and Reptile's reports are optimistic enough, I'll allow you to participate in the night rounds of exercise as well. Hard work and dedication, that's all I ask for."

Black lowered his head in silent tribulation – he knew he was supposed to appreciate the Kahn's gesture yet his pain would not leave him be.

"Yvo told me the guards are not feeding you, and that's about to change as well," the Kahn continued, noticing the marksman was having a hard time trying to articulate his thoughts. "Training is going to demand a lot from you physically – you need to be fed accordingly in order to endure the challenge."

Black looked away as the Kahn took a deep breath.

"For as long as you are here, I will do everything in my power to hunt them down and make them pay for what they did to Zar – but if I fail, if I don't succeed, know that the minute you're free to walk, you have my permission to go hunt them down yourself."

"She shouldn't have been there," Black mumbled.

"It doesn't really matter now," the Kahn reflected somberly as his eyes met Black's.

"It matters to me," the gunman reckoned, finally. "Last night she confronted me – she had found out the truth about Aalem. I thought, as she was leaving, that she would not return. But _this_ … not like this." He embraced himself as he cried, powerless and broken.

"You think this was your fault?" Kotal asked in a low tone, as if afraid his words could hurt the man even more.

"I don't think it was my fault – I  _know_  it was my fault."

"No matter what happened between the two of you, you could have always worked things out with patience and time; two elements that you know by heart by now – yet they took that chance away from you,  _they_  were the ones who stole her from you - not yourself." Even if there was an undeniable truth embedded in the Kahn's words, Erron's guilt was torturing him with the wrath of a God that had been provoked. As tears engulfed him, Black lay down on his cot again, his legs curled up against his stomach, his eyes drifting out of focus.

The helpless Kahn understood then, that his words could never be the balsamic reassurance Black was in desperate need of. He stood up in silence and placed a soft kiss on the gunslinger's forehead before leaving the cell.

"Rest now, son," he whispered, brokenhearted. "I myself will come back for you tomorrow, to escort you to your wife's funeral." He closed the door as he walked out of that small, dark cell. "My heart is with you now." Black's numb ears heard the Kahn say as his voice trailed off, the sound of his serene footsteps marching down the corridor were the very last thing he heard before finally succumbing to slumber.

* * *

A distinctive sound woke him up a few hours later. A voice he knew too well to pretend time and oblivion had erased it from his convoluted memory. As she cleared her throat the ex-Earthrealmer got up and walked towards the bars – he cocked his head in disbelief: of all the people he would have expected to see there, Ferra wasn't one of them.

Her pockets were filled with his stuff: from ammunition to brown leather bags filled with golden coins. The mercenary chuckled at the sight, the image too ironic for him to react any differently.

"I guess I have to thank you, dwarf," a sarcastic Black began, "at least you waited for Zar to be gone."

"Ferra don't steal!" The tiny warrior yelled, visibly offended. "Ferra  _protects_."

Only then he noticed Torr standing behind her. The beast grunted, he sounded vicious – he sounded angry.

"Calm down, big boy. This is between the lady and me," Black said as he raised an inquisitive eyebrow at the large being sheltering Ferra at the other side of the bars. The tiny warrior pressed her lips together in a thin, serious line before looking down – her curled up fists becoming simply hands, small hands, just hanging at the sides of her waist. The intense look in her eyes softened gradually as well – it was the first time she was seeing Black after the trial and many things had changed, too much water had run under that old bridge of theirs yet the image of that man there, the shadow of the man she used to know, was both endearing and terrifying for her.

"We sorry."

She had never been eloquent – she had always been direct; as direct as the linguistic aspects of her kind had allowed her to be. Yet those two words were perhaps the most sincere speech the gunslinger had ever heard. Torr accompanied her simple sentence with a soft whimper – far from the bellicose tone the beast would always imprint all over his precarious diction and very close to a heart-felt emotion he could not bring himself to translate into proper words no matter how hard he tried. Phonemes and letters were not their strongest suit, the gunslinger knew, yet there was a certain sort of veracity in the way the symbiotic pairing would express themselves; a basal honesty perhaps, only comparable to the thoughtless yet determining sincerity of a child.

Moved by their gesture, Black retreated to the darker portion of his cell, his body out of sight now. He had spent so much time blaming Ferra for his imprisonment; blaming her for a fictitious betrayal he had crafted in his imagination that now he simply could not bring himself to outrun the shame and the regrets contaminating his thoughts.

She had suffered way back then, with her back against the wall.

They had threatened her only to discard her words later. Such cruelty seemed alien now, the whole charade had been completely unnecessary, the ex-Earthrealmer silently reckoned.

After a few moments of quiet contemplation, Black got up again and walked towards the bars – it was time to stop blaming others for his own sins and mistakes. He reached out for the tiny warrior as he slid his fingers across her forearm – there she was, stoic and solemn; welcoming a touch that felt familiar and friendly for the very first time.

Turning around to face Torr, the child-like enforcer got on her tiptoes as she retrieved something from the beast's hands. It was an obscured object, a shape he could not place.

"Wife kept this," Ferra said as she brushed the surface of the box with her tiny hand, her palm blackened by the ashes of his own untamable flames.

His box of memories, rescued from the irascible tongues of fire for the second time.

"She with boy," Ferra mumbled as she stretched her arms to offer him the charred container.

Unable to hold back the tears any longer, the marksman broke down again as he realized that Zarrabayeusse had saved his treasured memories from himself. He took the box, the burnt wood felt foreign when summoned by his bewildered touch. Caressing the item with a renewed tenderness he had not allowed anyone to witness in what felt like an eternity, Black smiled fondly as his eyes returned to Ferra.

"I know – she is in peace now," was all he managed to say.

The woman he had but didn't want to have and the woman he never had but wished he had had both saved the man inside that box: the original Erron Black; the one that existed only in the shape of all those bittersweet souvenirs. After many lives, after many deaths, he still was the common element uniting the loves of his many lives. Holding the box in his arms, Black realized that time had started again for him: he had tried to get rid of all those memories in order to detach himself from the man that he had once been. He had tried to say goodbye to that box, yet the object seemed determined to remain by his side.

"Thank you," he whispered.

The very notion of time had been created again for him. He had tried to say goodbye to that version of himself, the man who cared. A long parenthesis of impersonality and coldness had trapped him then, for far too long, and now it was time for the clocks to start ticking again – the revelation, pristine like an epiphany, hit his eyes with such blinding light he could only embrace his new-found conscious: this new Black, reeling in the ashes of that man from his ancient past and rediscovered by the kindness of all those women of his life, was as real as that box.

The ritual completed, the summoning had been successful.

The heartless mercenary had finally succumbed to the tears cascading down his cheeks – the pain he was enduring was real, it was all the proof he needed to finally realize that he had already changed. He had already returned to his original version. His brand new beginning had come from yet another beginning's end: the end of that cold-hearted, greedy murderer they had invented the minute Annie met her creator.


	30. Back

_He walked in to find the saloon deserted, abandoned perhaps._

_The place was a mess, with old wooden tables and chairs scattered all over the floor._

_He looked down at his own calloused hands while approaching the bar – they seemed smaller somehow, lighter. He reached for his pistol but it was nowhere to be found and then he noticed it: he had suddenly turned into an earlier version of himself, he was young again and most of the dark thoughts and bitter memories that should have been weighing heavily on his head weren't there to haunt him anymore._

_A ray of sunlight interrupted his train of thought as it swirled around and found its way through a crack in a distant wall. The piano started to play and there she was on stage once again, ready to perform. Her blue dress suddenly reminded him just how immaculate, how pristine she looked while on the spotlight – she was a bright, courageous woman and a very talented one also. He grabbed one of the ruined chairs and dragged it closer to the stage; eager to listen. She was a vision, his vision._

_The teenage cowboy grinned softly as he observed the way she was walking towards him; with her head held high, ready to sing. Then she stopped walking and stood in the center of the stage. With the required dramatism of the artist, the woman placed both her hands at the sides of her waist – the vision was complete now, he recognized it instinctively: the pose, he knew it by heart after watching his mother perform for so many years._

" _Aren't ya gonna help me with the drinks, boy? What made ya think you'll be getting the night off?" As Good Old Jacob patted his shoulder lightly, the young Erron Black noticed a saloon blooming with the sudden lights of many lives that had been extinguished already, long ago. The intrepid, swirling sunlight had succumbed to the artificial nature of an illuminated night. The girls were already entertaining the patrons, the distinctive chatter of those with way too much alcohol running freely through the avenue of their veins and the heat, the incomparable heat of a good old summer night inside The Wise Bird._

" _Sorry, Jacob," the boy mumbled apologetically as he stood up and began to walk the familiar path separating him from the bar. He grinned softly at the old man, that vivid candor clearly reflected in his new-found ingenuity. The place was alive again and so was he, way before war and death, way before the punishment of a perpetual, vicious youthfulness that would detach him, in time, from everything and everyone._

* * *

 Arc III

Chapter XXX

**Back**

**(To Where You've Never Been)**

* * *

  _"I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew."_

Hermann Hesse ― Siddhartha

* * *

As his coffee-colored eyes darted around trying to adjust their focus on all those faces he presumed lost to time, a bitter thought crossed his mind: he felt the urgent need to scream, from the top of his lungs, to beg them – not to get too attached to the symbols of an era that was only going to succumb to progress and oblivion.

As those faces, incandescent memories of a foreign time now reappearing before his eyes, seemed to pay no mind to the young boy trying to commit all of their features to memory; he could feel every emotion, every feeling stirring inside.

Erron's ignited heart was compelling him to do something more than just looking.

He felt the immense need to gently tap Jacob's broad shoulders and embrace his old man; his mouth would desperately beg for his forgiveness then, for being such a bad little brat – for leaving him alone, completely alone when he should have remained by his side when the man needed him the most.

He felt the unparalleled need to jump across the bar and give one last hug to his mother; the heartfelt embrace he had been saving just for her inside the most recondite places of his untamable heart – he wished he had the strength to actually talk to the woman; to tell her that the bond uniting a son with his mother is meant to be sacred and never-ending, that it's not meant to be ruled by capricious frontiers or unbearable mood swings. He wished, for a bitter moment, he could explain to her that while he understood her pain and her resentment, he still needed her.

Caught up in his nostalgia, the teenage cowboy barely noticed Jessica as she approached him. The woman offered him a broad smile as she signaled him to make room for her – then he noticed it; the timid curvature of her growing belly, her rosy cheeks and the loving eyes of a mother who just couldn't wait to meet her baby.

The boy grinned tenderly in return as he allowed one hand to rest on her stomach. Then fear engulfed him, surreptitiously. He panicked, but only briefly.

"It's Adrian's, you stupid boy," the woman said as she giggled, "you and I haven't…  _you know_ … in a very long time. It's not possible, Erron."

The suspicious boy eyed her speculatively: "You sure?"

Jessica's lips curled up as she fought hard the urgent need compelling her to laugh out loud at his naïveté.

"Erron – you and I haven't had sex in more than two years now; the moment you met Amanda you knew she was the one, not me," she explained, warmly.

He breathed out then; at least he had done the right thing this time. His skin, decorated by silent tremor, remembered the old hesitations and doubts that had scorched his stay with Dexitis' family; that boy growing inside L'ampaghna's belly might have been his, the mercenary was still certain that the capricious lady known as good fortune had remained by his side back then. To his surprise, and even if he was fully aware that this sudden reality was only a fictitious one, it still felt good to have such a determining certainty.

Back then, he had remained skeptical during L'ampaghna's pregnancy, only allowing his troubled mind to speculate every now and then – the unfathomable ghost of his guilt torturing him during his nights, tormenting him for having played his only friend, for ruining his marriage, for polluting L'am with such an inexorable sin.

Yet, in the end, the son's face had finally gotten adorned by the distinctive features molding the righteous father's face and the gunslinger breathed, precious relief filling his lungs with a brand new sense of hope. He was off the hook, or so it seemed – and even if the sin was still there, branding his skin and categorizing him amongst those who contaminate others with their mere existence, at least he felt like the damage he had coaxed upon the gentle couple could still be fixed.

He was wrong.

The capricious lady known as good fortune had never been one of his closest friends.

Temptation had knocked on his door again and, just like every other time, he had let it in rather easily.

If there was one thing that his longevity had taught him, it was that life always finds a way to repeat itself. L'am and Dex would become, in time, the burning Phoenix rising from the flames of his misplaced desires; the bonfire originated by the consummation of a previous sin, Jessica and Adrian becoming the original seed of his peccant nature, only to spread their ashes on a corrupted land far more dangerous and vicious than hell itself.

"You'll be a great mother," the boy said, the feeling genuine and earnest.

He allowed his hand to stay there, visiting Jessica's belly for a few more moments in order to capture that inspiring, warm sensation. He couldn't bring his eyes to stare into Jessica's sweet gaze now that the uncomfortable lump in his throat was beginning to threaten his sanity: he wanted to beg for her forgiveness, he wanted to embrace that woman sitting right next to him and cry on her shoulder like an infant.

He was only a child back then, yet the sole remembrance of that day was still powerful enough to freeze the blood running through his veins. He wanted to say:  _"I'm sorry – for many things. I'm sorry because I was weak and I should have stopped before things got out of hand, I'm sorry for leaving you alone with that man, I'm sorry that I chose to stay on the wrong side of the door – I should have been there, I should have protected you; I should have saved you. Sorry for all those times that I just pretended to be a man when I should have acted like one."_

The nearly bicentennial man, trapped inside the dreams and the body of a teenager, understood that this new reality knew no harm – things were evidently better than they had been before; it was like no sorrow, no drama, no mistakes had been made at all. This new rendition of his own life, freed from all heavy burdens and moral paradoxes, was like going back to a home that had never existed.

He stared at his own perplexed reflection as his face got recreated on the surface of a dirty silver tray. Drops of liquor were carelessly illustrating the corners of his eyes and old scratches were providing his skin with a brand new texture – only when he ran his own fingers across the skin covering his cheekbones he noticed the artificial nature of that image staring right back at him – his skin, sun-kissed and blessed by the unmistakable vitality of youth, was subtly telling him that his impervious skin was still untouched; still unpolluted.

The only corrupted version of himself was trapped inside that silver tray.

Paying attention to the contour of his facial structure and the frame of his bones, Erron quickly deduced that he wasn't as young as he thought he was. His eyes weren't those of a child no more; his expression already carried the experience that only years can bring.

He looked over his shoulder to find the old calendar that Jacob had always had pinned to the end wall of the bar: June 1863.

The first certainty came to mind: he was twenty years old. War was already a raw, cruel reality for the country yet, apparently, he was still free from its bindings. The second certainty solidified itself before his eyes in the shape of Josephine: even if the mother was still performing her enchanting, voiceless songs, she had made it. She had survived her own demons. She should have died back in 1859 but she was still there, somehow, looking as stunning as ever.

He smiled, as he observed Josephine shining in the place where she belonged – it was soothing for him to be able to admire her from afar once more and to know, that even if it was only in his dreams, the woman was fine and far from the obscure fate that had kissed her goodbye so many lives ago.

The third certainty presented itself in a rather obvious way: if it was indeed 1863, Jessica should have been long gone by then as well.

So maybe it was true, after all – this dream was actually becoming the closest chance for redemption he was ever going to have. All those happy endings that back then had turned their backs on him, branding his skin with the marks of tragedy and disillusion were now seemingly blended together into such a spectacular event: the reclaiming of his soul, of the man he should have been if only given the proper chance.

This seemed to be a pretty proper chance – only he knew it wasn't real, and that bittersweet notion was hard to shake.

The patrons were already asking for one more song when the group entered the Wise Bird. Their matching uniforms and the many visible scars wore like stigmata were revealing their participation in the conflict still dividing the nation. Those colors, he knew them all too well, were the colors he himself had worn many years ago. Erron furrowed his brow as they approached the bar but Jessica stood up and offered them a toothy grin.

"Good night, gentlemen," she greeted the group as she patted Jacob on the back to indicate the old bartender that those thirsty throats needed his care. "Ladies," she smiled again then winked to express her sympathy towards the timid females accompanying the bunch of soldiers.

As the bartender quickly busied himself pouring drinks for the newcomers, Erron noticed the group consisted of seven men and three young women – soldiers and nurses, traveling together, enjoying whatever mundane pleasures the night could offer right before being forced to embrace the fiery arms of battle once again.

Erron moved away from the bar, trying to give them some privacy, knowing by heart that the little moments of joy in between battles were sacred for both soldiers and nurses yet one of the men placed his hands on the young gunslinger's shoulder, forcing him to turn around.

"Are you from around here, son?" the soldier asked and Erron nodded in silence. "We could surely use young soldiers like you out there…"

The thought of joining the group seemed alien now; nearly as alien as it had felt back then. Even if he had been a great supporter of their cause he hadn't chosen to fight because he was chasing an ideal, a moral compass that needed to be restored – he had dived into the turbulent waters of war because life had given him no choice. He had absolutely nothing left to lose back then, so he had decided to offer his skills for the simple taste, the simple rush of the constant specter of death lurking around every corner.

With a bit of luck, a stray bullet would find him, putting a premature end to a life signed by misery and sorrow.

But luck had never been on his side.

Ironically enough, the man who chose war over peace because he had nothing left to lose ended up losing more than he could handle: Annie, and the baby that would have made him a father.

"Stop it, boys," Jessica chimed in as soon as she realized how uncomfortable Erron was now that all eyes were on him, "he made a promise." The boy could tell, just by the look in her eyes, that she was already regretting her words. The group laughed, a hysterical cascade of sounds meant to ridicule the boy who wasn't ready to go to war because he had made a promise to only God knows who.

 _If they only knew_ , Erron pondered as his tightened lips repressed the anger that was fighting to be released. Yet the feeling dissipated from his chest rather abruptly the moment he saw  _those_  eyes staring back at him from across the room.

Diaphanous as ever; created by a higher being and placed into this land for him to experience that emotion humans tend to call _love_.

"Don't even try to convince this young man to join you, gentlemen," Amanda began, placing a soft hand in the center of his palpitating chest. The touch, the sole notion of knowing her skin had been created to summon his skin and his skin alone – it just felt  _so_  real.

Even if he still didn't know the slightest thing about this  _promise_  that was miraculously keeping him away from war, a part of him still managed to embrace peace as the sudden epiphany invaded his entire being: the reasoning, straightforward and precise, curling his lips in silent contempt.

If he's not out there, fighting to defend an already lost cause, he is never going to meet Annie – the nurse is not going to fall for him; she won't feel compelled to follow him. He won't succumb to her beauty and her nourishing affection: that child won't ever know the painful flames of undeserved agony.

Moving nearer, Amanda unbuttoned his shirt to expose his upper torso and shoulders – all those scars; he hadn't seen them before yet they seemed so real the sole sight of them scattered all over his skin made his stomach twist in disgust. "He's not going out there again," the girl sentenced, her eyes fixed on the group, contemplating how their expressions mutated – all those mocking smiles disappeared abruptly as sheer pity and guilt quieted their voices. "It took me months to find him; many doctors and nurses told me he wasn't gonna make it. There is no way this man is leaving me ever again."

Those nasty wounds and scars seemed a small price to pay now that he had her. He could live with an illustrated body; each mark imprinted on his skin would always be there to remind him just how miserable his existence could be if it wasn't for her. Silently, Erron buttoned up his shirt again and held her hand. Even if he was a stranger lurking in the subdomains of his own consciousness with no real clue about the strings connecting each face with each place, he followed her all the same until their bodies disappeared from the bar only to emerge in the dimly lit corridor; up the stairs and into his old room.

* * *

As if self-addressing his very own oneiric state, the man in the dream embraces the fact that he knows he's dreaming and, just like a mystified conjurer, dares to explore those blurry edges that cannot quite conceal the shape venturing ecstasy right next to his own enraptured body.

Back in the consuming fire, the burning chimera of his desire exhibits a pure yet rather démodé amber hue.

As his lips lead the way, leaving a trail of kisses along her slender, soft neck, his hands tuck her hair behind her ears.

Her legs, pressed hard against his waist, are the perfect trap secluding his skin within their grasp – he wishes, even though he knows it's not possible, he wishes he could stop time and just stay quiet; subjugated by her ways and baptized deep within her carnal type of mercy. He, the man that knows that time can be stopped, the one holding his own hourglass in the stronghold of his ancient fingers, wants to remain there with her, eternally. The notion of a 'now' that he cannot even touch feels intoxicating yet somehow empowering for him. Those deep blue eyes, deconstructing his essence to his very core, are craving him; exhibiting the very same lustful passion he had once shown for her, no matter how late it had been – her wedding dress becoming a white mess on the floor, her tears and his tears baptizing the hungrier side of their affection with the irrevocable feeling of being already defeated by the circumstances.

He still remembers – her hands getting lost under the creases of her cape, her glimmering eyes in the rain, those fingers scorching her cheeks, the calamitous burning hatred in those prying eyes as they watched him make love to another woman – the brawl inside and the love outside; her mouth on his mouth. Each portion of hers, traced by his eyes, could never be compared to the actual feeling of really having her.

Possession, once again, becomes a mere matter of perspective.

He has her, even though he knows he's dreaming. He has her, but even though he doesn't want to let go he knows, deep within the cobwebs of his own twisted subconscious – he's already let her go. Time itself has already let her go; her body now less than ashes - what is even left of her now? What is left of the immaculate vision that she once was?

Iridescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket; he could swear that, for a brief second, he could even see the doctor staring back at him, inside those big blue eyes – those faces juxtaposed, no matter how fleeting, the bridge connecting his past with another era he couldn't even call his present seems vivid and bright.

Her breathing is deep and even, almost peaceful. She has found a way to slide one of her hands under his shirt, her palm now resting against the weathered skin of his chest, slowly making its way down to his navel. Weakened, and enraptured by these new, unleashed feelings, he lets his head fall into the soft hollow between her neck and shoulder. The faces change again; is that Amanda, or is it maybe Alexandra? Are they the same obscure being fighting its way through the little light that still burns inside of him?

The woman longs for his lips and so, she ventures a kiss – perhaps, the first one of many or maybe, the very last in a concatenation of loving gestures that shall never be professed.

His mouth, though dead at first, is finally showing some signs of life as the tenderness of the emotion wraps him up in a sense of warmth he hasn't felt in a very long time.

Who is he even making love to now?

As the faces change once again, eclipsed and sheltered by the shadows of the old attic, the man realizes that, for example, he has never even asked the doctor if she had had a great-great-great-great-grandmother named Amanda. His perplexity back then, now finding sweet indulgence in the clamor of those changing hands – he knows, oh god he's certain: it's just that their resemblance is  _so uncanny_ …

As the perfidy of his lost loves continues to grow in the shape of that woman teasing him with nothing but nearly desperate, raw affection, his hands begin to move more frantically now, taking off her clothes and placing her on top of him with just one smooth movement of his arms – she's nearly weightless, he soon realizes; she's like a pale feather carried by his windy impulses. He closes his eyes to breathe her in; she – just whoever she wants to be now, Amanda or Alexandra,  _does it really matter anymore?_

She takes off the only piece of clothing covering his torso as his erratic yet determined hands find a way under her skirt, digits eager to satiate a hunger so ancient it still blinds him. His fingers, though clumsily, finally remove her underwear. But their resemblance is just so uncanny… yet their differences seem now as real as their similarities. Even so, he could not actually be sure there were such things as differences between them – at all. He had met Alex when the woman was in her late twenties, early thirties perhaps. Amanda had disappeared from his life way before she was even twenty. He had never known the adult version of the only woman he had ever loved. Maybe this woman, the doctor, was the sublime re-apparition of that other woman from his past; perhaps her pertinence was so that it made it possible for him to imagine her face as a grown up, that child he had adored back then now out of its nurturing caterpillar and into the warm embrace of a pretended adulthood.

Maybe they were meant to complement each other: Alex would allow him to explore Amanda as a grown-up while Amanda would help him take hold of a naked body he had never actually seen. Alex became then, the other side of an obscured, eclipsed moon only to allow Amanda to expose what little light remained for his eyes to wonder. Alex became then, the other side to his beloved Amanda. A brand new side he had never known until he met her.

The mercenary stares into those glimmering blue eyes as she moves closer. The woman, longing for him, leans in and whispers in his delighted ears.

"I missed you," she invokes him yet the mercenary can't place the voice.

Is it Alex’s?

Is it Amanda’s?

Yet she pays no mind, she is not aware of the fact that he can't put his finger on whose voice is that. Laughing mercilessly, the woman tattoos his neck with her lips. He tries to focus once again, tries to swim in his own muddy waters, tries to go on with fistfuls of two ghosts that he can't even fully love in his dreams. Blinded by his own misfortune, and prisoner of a thirst he knows he cannot quench, he makes his way inside her, his pace is frantic from the very beginning as his busy hands start working their way up into the clumsy strands of her auburn hair.

The sounds of pleasure, elevating her shape, rise from the bottom of her throat only to die in an agonizing bonfire of nameless voices that still today, manage to take his breath away. She whimpers and calls out his name, with her eyes closed, breathing hard through parted lips as her fingers get busy leaving burning trails all over his skin.

She cups his face with her warm hands. Her back, arched and enraptured, explodes as the mercenary places his lips on her neck and finally whispers: "I missed you too."

It's Amanda. The one venturing ecstasy in his private illusion is none other than the greatest love of his life; his eyes can see her clearly now. His words seem to shatter her into a million ungoverned pieces, the meaning behind that sentence seems to reach her dormant depths, bringing her contained shadows into the diaphanous light. Her lungs, longing for air once more, engage in a laborious endeavor as he speeds up even faster, visibly frenzied by her new-found euphoria; the rhythmical race perpetuated by their bodies, fully entangled in this maddening motion, is making them both feel completely overwhelmed.

His tongue comes out and lands on her upper lip, tracing the delicate outline of that adored mouth of hers as she tries to devour him once again. Her messy auburn hair, carelessly brushing over his forehead, is a soft caress mitigating the ghostly sensations carried by her image. As she stares down at him with her rich blue eyes, he suddenly becomes tense underneath her touch, his whole body now twitching beneath its grip.

Amanda covers his mouth with her own lips. The troubled mercenary bits them hard, the timid sight of blood is suddenly startles him, even if only momentarily, yet the image of her face engulfed by an indomitable, ancient pleasure is causing his coffee-colored eyes to drift away as they both finally collapse on his old bed, neither one of them exactly sure where their own body ends and the other's begins.

Eyelids fluttering shut, finally, as his head helplessly falls back against the pillow. Amanda knows – she notices his sullen discord. As he sinks deeper into his own saddening nostalgia, she pulls him into her worried arms. Reciprocating her desperate need, the gunslinger rushes to grip onto that overwhelming affection willing to help him face his own darkness. His strong arms cannot contain her yet he tries. He's afraid she might disappear again, afraid she might turn into dust the minute his arms close up around her.

"What's wrong?" she lets out softly as she slides her slender fingers across his warm forehead.

The one holding him close, naked and covered in sweat is not Amanda anymore. The one caressing him so delicately, trying to comfort him now is not the love of his life: it's Alexandra. Their pristine pieces and his shadowed entirety, eclipsed under the same light, are no longer the same thing.

He hides his face in the soft spot between her face and her shoulder – yet as his eyes adjust themselves to the receding lights engulfing the room he realizes: he is no longer in his old room, he's back in  _her_  bed - the same bed where their inconclusive story had begun.

"Why are you here, Black?" Alex asks, the colors of her voice exhibiting a brand new sense of concern.

He stares into her big, blue eyes, petrified.

"Why did you come back here?" she questions him as her hands come to rest on his exalted chest. "You had the real Amanda, you didn't need  _me_  to remember her;  _you had her_  – you had the real thing," the doctor whispers as her arms begin to cradle him; those hands of hers, soft as feathers, already brushing away the tears cascading down his face.


	31. 53M / Ard'ahain

_Introduction:_

_The Peace of Wild Things._

* * *

He eventually returned to Arroya (now known as Wickett) one last time, back in the seventies. He wanted to just see the place, see what had changed besides the name, what remained the same; learn all about the fate of every single one of those buildings he had once called his own. So he found himself visiting a town that had little to do with  _that other town_ ; the bittersweet location that completed his most precious memories of a time that, he knew, was never coming back.

It hit him then, as he visualized his own tired bones walking down those hauntingly familiar yet now foreign streets that had constituted the golden days of his distant youth: nothing truly remained there for him to hold on to – not anymore. The Wise Bird was gone; the monument of a lost era had been erased from the face of the Earth – the old establishment that had once swung somewhere in between a saloon and a brothel was now a flourishing bakery.

But that wasn't the worst part.

The Taggarts' house was now a roller disco.

Of all possible things in  _this_  world,  _that_  world, and  _any_  other world… they had turned it into a fucking roller disco. The place where he had made love to Amanda for the first, last and only time; the place where he had said goodbye to the greatest love of his life was now something as puny, something as belligerently innocuous as a goddamned roller disco.

Each peace is different from the previous peace that came before it, and it is bound to be equally different from the next peace to come after that one. Little did the cowboy know about Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism back then but the notions in his head were not so far from the author's point of view: during wars, people always hope for the peace of their youth to come back after the conflict; people tend to confuse and blend such fundamental concepts – peace and youth, like Romeo and Juliet, always longing for each other only to meet the most tragic of conclusions.

It is always another peace the one that comes after a war, it's a timid type of peace – it's a shy type of peace; almost pleading, always whispering about an imminent danger…

Peace is the overture of war.

He lit up a cigar in silence as he continued to take a walk down Memory Lane: to his own spirit, he had irrevocably become the living embodiment of démodé folklore. The first voices of a heated sense of feminism were already jeopardizing his antique morals. All those elephant pants walking carelessly all around him were just another indication yelling at him that times had positively changed, that his own belle époque of cowboys, saloons and Amandas was, indeed, never coming back.

If anything, time was only going to keep moving forward; even the roller disco was already condemned to disappear once the clocks considered its splendor had reached the end of its tether.

It's always  _another_  peace.

Nor replenished neither renewed. Just different - because it's always a different society, a different dynamic, a different political structure the one that welcomes and shapes the terms of that newborn, fragile peace.

The cowboy understood it back then.

Yet he headed for the old cemetery anyways, he wanted to pay his respects to the ones he had loved back in the day. The place seemed torn from the pages of a horror novel with weathered tombs covered in moss and nearly unreadable names still trying to stubbornly cling to the unbreakable yet always flimsy veil of time. Many mausoleums had been bricked up; entire families had been extinguished or so it seemed, erased from everyone's memories.

He kneeled down in front of his mother's grave and closed his eyes minutely – the image of his younger self and Good Old Jacob crossed his mind then, as he recalled her funeral, as he remembered that no-one other than his old man and himself had attended it.

All those saddened faces that had shown their sympathies for the fallen singer hadn't even bothered to show up back then. What was even left of them now, he wondered, as his eyes darted around the tombstones? Were their sad, pathetic little names still there? Were their identities still supplicating the clocks for five more minutes? Five more minutes of recognition, as if bargaining the mere testimony still evidencing that they had, in fact, existed?

It's always  _another_  peace the one that comes to enrapture entire societies after a war.

He searched for  _her_  grave back then, but he never managed to find it. He found comfort in knowing that, perhaps, she hadn't died in Wickett. Maybe she was buried someplace else; maybe her bones belonged in a different land now. Maybe she wasn't alone. Maybe she had harvested new souls after him, while she was still alive and so she had learned to survive inside the memories of those who had loved her, those ones still walking this Earth that had once been theirs and theirs alone. Maybe they were still surrounding her; perhaps locked inside a bricked up mausoleum like the ones displayed in front of his eyes.

Maybe.

As he stood up and got ready to leave, he understood that it was the last time he would ever visit that place. That new Arroya he had found and the old Arroya from his memories were two completely different towns; the one from his golden years seemed like a pristine, holy virgin while this new,  _aggiornato_  version called Wickett looked like a heartless whore eager to desecrate the ashes of everything and everyone that he had once held dear.

He could say the same thing about the war and peace dichotomy; only now he couldn't exactly discern which one was supposed to be the virgin and which one was supposed to be the whore.

The American Civil War had turned him into a mercenary – the First World War had magnified his skills. Yet the Second World War had filled his head with doubt and hatred; little still remained of the old codecs that had imprinted his moral compass back then. Now the world was succumbing to a far more dangerous war: a silent war, wrapping them up in yet another type of peace.

 _Peace_ … that slippery notion that fills up the void between war and yet more war was about to salute him once more now. That disturbing grey peace that only Outworlders can endure; that tremulous peace that always finds a way to say way more than what any treaty or agreement could ever manage to say… It's always  _another_  peace the one that comes after a war because it's always a different society, a different dynamic, a different political structure the one that welcomes and shapes the terms of that newborn peace.

It's always  _another peace_  the one that comes after a war.

The cowboy knew it back then – just like he still knows it now.

* * *

 Arc III

Chapter XXXI

**53M / Ard'ahain**

**(Six Degrees of Separation – Side A)**

* * *

"…No, even that wall was not always glass; at times it again became black stone, and then I did not know what was happening on the other side, what had become of her in those unfathomable intervals; what strange events might be taking place. I was even convinced that during those moments her face changed, that her lips curled with scorn and she was perhaps laughing with some other man, and that the whole story of the passageways was my own ridiculous invention,  _and that after all there was only one tunnel, dark and solitary: mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my entire life._  And in one of those transparent sections of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had naively believed that she was moving in a tunnel parallel to mine, when in fact she belonged to the wide world, the unbounded world of those who did not live in tunnels; and perhaps out of curiosity she had approached one of my strange windows, and had glimpsed the spectacle of my unredeemable solitude […]"

_Ernesto Sábato – The Tunnel_

* * *

  **53M**

* * *

[Eight years and 363 days later]

He had already lost all track of time. The immaterial substance was becoming thinner and thinner with each passing day; each waking moment leading him straight into the unfathomable arms of oblivion. Had he had a pen, he would have decorated the walls of his cell with all those tally marks that the inmates back in Earthrealm were so fond of, or so it seemed, depending on the colorful voices telling the multiplicity of stories about life behind bars.

Tally marks had never truly been his thing back then, while he was still captive under Carlisle's indefatigable supervision. His cell had remained untouched then; he didn't really see the need to ruin the concrete with the rather rhetorical resemblance of such a sad calendar. Of course, the irony would follow him and even chase after him if he was feeling particularly evasive, in order to imprint and carve, in time, all those previously neglected tally marks across his own forearms nonetheless, as if subtly reproaching him:  _"I told you so."_

Time after Zar had become nothing but the memory of an intransitive agent for him, its unreliable nature could still not really bind him. He, the mythical child of time itself, was finally free of its stifling manners. He simply assumed that a new day would always come after another; there would never be something simpler than that.

He stopped asking what day it was during his training sessions rather quickly – the repetitive action grew so old so easily they could already anticipate the frustration exhibited all over his face the second they answered that question. Reptile was the first to understand the machinations behind Black’s sudden reluctance, and the Zaterran enforcer even decided to help him then: "It's the day before tomorrow," he would always reply, joining Black in his brand new crusade against the monopoly of time. His routine had, in time, become his everything. It was the reason why he would wake up in the morning as well as the purpose directing him straight back to bed each night.

By the time he opened his eyes, they were already there.

He should have listened to those footsteps approaching his cell. He should have sensed those shadows as they quickly moved to illustrate the walls of his space.

Yvo, surrounded by five guards, was leading the Committee that would set him free. The barrister turned the key and impregnated the whole room with a renewed sense of liberty yet Black knew better than to trust such a precarious, simple mechanism. Although he knew, after so long, that it was time for his replenished self to walk.

"Erron Black," the barrister addressed him, forcing the mercenary to meet his gaze, "you are free to go."

But Black didn't move.

It wasn't that he didn't want to leave his cell, au contraire, he had actually craved for that moment. He just couldn't believe that after so much pain and torturous sorrow, setting him free could be so easy. They had made him feel as if he was bound to earn that freedom he had been deprived of and he _had_ , in a way, by spending an entire decade behind bars. He knew it, he was no stranger to the system:  _you do bad, you do time_ yet the events that had polluted his incarceration were blinding him from such obvious evidence. He had already served his term; and he had, in fact, already  _earned_  his freedom by doing so yet now the very notion of justice seemed just so deprived of all factual reasoning for him… It was like criminals could do almost anything; they would spend some time behind bars and they would be released after their designated periods of captivity had positively expired. He concluded that the real punishment for their actions was subtly hidden in the nearly morbid way they would be forced to rot away in prison – none of those criminals had as much time to spare as he had, he knew, but still the whole process of incarcerating a man seemed dubious to him now – fragile, simple.

_Easy._

He had lost ten years of his life but what does it mean for a man who is 184 years old? A lost, lackluster dot in a line composed by many brighter, more significant dots? A parenthesis within time? A breather, maybe?

Even if it wasn't the first time he had been forced to witness life from behind bars, it had indeed been the longest period his body had lacked that sense of freedom. For moments it had nearly destroyed his sanity but in the end, it still felt  _simple_.

Zarrabayeusse had been right back then: ten years weren't supposed to mean that much for a man like him. And even if the painfully slow day-by-day had felt like waking up in hell almost every morning, the final outcome of his stay in the Maximum Security Pavilion of the dungeon still felt innocuous for him. The compilation of all those years seemed  _easy_  now that the insufferable daily nature of his punishment had finally subsided.

He himself had put many men and women behind bars but he still was a complete stranger when it came to their release. Was it that simple for everyone? What was it that they did then, when those highly anticipated words would come then, to massage their wounded pride?

Was he supposed to feel happy? Or maybe relieved?

Was he supposed to thank them? To cry, even?

He narrowed his eyes, still trying to wrap his head around such flimsy concepts, as he approached Yvo and the guards. Once freed from his cell, the barrister locked the door again; the impervious and now empty space becoming foreign for him almost instantly. Without sharing a single word they all turned their backs to the image of that putrid cell and marched away; the guards quickly abandoned them the second the group had walked through the prison's main gate. Up to the corridors and straight into the agitated life of the early morning Palace, the wind brushing his skin had never felt so inspiring.

The noises, the light, the faces… A common man would have cried at the mere reminiscence of past experiences suddenly invading his dormant mind. But he was no ordinary man, not anymore, and all those iridescent flashes of a sense of mundanity he had lost so long ago were only causing him to realize the hatred he felt towards that place now. The Palace; the idol of his most intimate, personal defeat, had now become the monument for all of his bottled up resentment to finally gain a solidified, substantial shape.

Yvo led him straight to the room that had been his until the final night, back when M'horel decided to attack him. Another key unlocked the door, proving the mercenary that no-one had used his personal chamber during his absence. Black stepped inside the room but when he looked over his shoulder, he noticed the barrister hadn't followed him. Instead, the tiny man was only watching him from afar, with his body leaned against the doorframe.

"I'll come back for you in an hour. The Kahn will meet you then. Dress accordingly." With that, Yvo left.

The sight of his old room was like entering a past he had fought hard to forget. They hadn't moved a single thing; the same chaotic room he had abandoned a decade ago was the exact same one he was receiving now. Absorbed by the images of that night, the gunman considered his imminent meeting with Kotal Kahn: the last time he had seen the emperor, fragility had gotten the best of him. Their encounter had taken place right after Zarrabayeusse's demise and, through the bitter half-smile adorning his naked visage now, the emperor's words still rang inside his ears with the petulance that only a true politician can offer: he had kept his word about his training, his diet and his personal hygiene. But that other part of the emperor's speech, the one regarding Zar's memorial…

_"I myself will come back for you tomorrow, to escort you to your wife's funeral."_

The Khan had never returned.

Black never really knew whether it was because the emperor had been lying to him from the get-go or if maybe something had made him change his mind. Yet the only thing that mattered, in the end, was that Kotal had never returned. Even if attending Zarrabayeusse's funeral was the last thing his troubled mind was ready to endure back, then the mercenary still felt like he should have been there to say his final goodbye to his wife but they didn't allow it. No one came for him the following day; the little he had heard about Zar's memorial, he had heard it from Ferra.

He searched through his wardrobe for his regular attire but as he slid his fingers through his old garments, he decided that it was time for a change. The whole room was pleading for a change; he considered as he turned around again to take in the view with eager, hungry eyes: Zar's blood was still painting his bedsheets, the hundreds of tiny glass fragments that had pricked his feet were still there as well, as if suspended in time. The jealousies were still half-opened; the scratches all over the still of the frame instantly reminded him of the final assault: half his back in the air, hanging outside the window.

Uneven pieces of M'horel's skull mask were still scattered near the bed and the sand from one of his grenades, the one he had smashed against the floor while trying to create a diversion, had taken residence all over the ruined chamber.

"Bang - Bang…" Ferra's timid voice broke the trance that had trapped him.

She stepped inside the room as his eyes accompanied the tiny warrior then she extended her arms towards him, exposing his precious box of memories. It was a sign of trust and gratitude towards the female enforcer - and now she was completing her part of the deal: Black had kept his box with him down in his cell for a few days only, fearing the questionable conditions of the dungeon could ruin the battered contents resting inside.

All those memories had already survived his own impulses and the menacing flames of his own incandescent bonfire but he wasn't sure they would endure the humidity of that filthy cell. As a token of his silent appreciation for her genuine, altruistic sense of friendship, Black had trusted Ferra with his box and, in return, the petite warrior had agreed to have his box returned to him the minute he was free from his cell.

He got on his knees and retrieved the box from her child-like hands, wishing he could at least vociferate a simple thank you to the only person who cared enough to visit him after Zarrabayeusse's death. Yet he still found it hard to speak, to say those words out loud, as if afraid the sounds of his gratitude could cause his entire self to disappear completely. Unable to find any other way to express what he was feeling, the cowboy mercenary quickly rested the box on the ground and wrapped his heavy arms around Ferra – the enforcer did not even have any time to resist the embrace; she just stood there, petrified, as if the man hugging her now had nothing to do with that other man she had grown accustomed to.

It took her a few moments for the feelings to sink in.

His arms were still enveloping her when she finally decided to incline her head towards his and reciprocate the gesture. Her shorter arms struggled then, but even so, no matter how much she kept trying to stretch her arms and fingers, she still couldn't cover the distance. As she heard him laugh, she settled for his neck; finally understanding that the geography of his broad shoulders was way out of her incipient reach.

They broke the embrace only to grace their faces with awkward smiles; simple and tender gestures that helped them remember their time together as his training progressed – from that undernourished, skeleton-like form of his to this brand new version of him; a version that was even better than the one before that miserable cell: toned walls of muscle were covering the fortress of his ancient bones, it would take somebody really stupid or with a gigantic death wish to fulfill to ever cross that man expecting anything less than a brutal lesson.

Her unorthodox methods had crafted a completely different warrior in him than the one he had been before – not only he would have his weapons and his deadly skills to defend himself now; she - and the other half of her existence - had provided him with unparalleled, nearly Mesozoic moves that could be defining in Kombat, should the need arise. Both Torr and Ferra had taught him everything they knew about the dance of a good battle – should he ever find himself in such a crucial situation exceeding the potential of his weapons and his skills, he would still have plenty of decisive moves in his personal inventory for him to come out of the showdown victorious.

"You hurry," the tiny warrior said before offering him a timid grin and Black nodded silently at her as he watched her leave, still bemused by his unprecedented gesture. He walked towards the door and locked it, then he picked up his box of returned memories and placed it on the chaotic, dusty table still placed in the center of his bedchamber. As the gunman noticed how most of his weapons would need to be cleaned and maybe some of them even polished before he could be able to use them again, he decided to get ready for his meeting with the Kahn – after all, there would always be time for him to run an extensive inventory of his possessions once freed from his civic obligations.

He went back to his wardrobe but couldn't decide what to wear. The simple, dirty tunic that had covered his body during his stay in prison had somewhat become a second-skin for him. Leaving the decisive election of his future outfit for later, the mercenary went to his private bathroom, filled up his copper-colored bathtub and got undressed.

Trying not to pay attention to the multicolored bruises scattered all across his torso, upper arms and legs was not an easy task: each mark was a reminder of his interactions with the dungeon guards and the cold words that would brush his ears after Zarrabayeusse's death.  _The filthy Earthrealmer still has his benefits_  they would say, pointlessly trying to embarrass him or make him feel guilty. His new diet, his training sessions – everything was perceived by them as an offense to the common citizen now engulfed in panic and trepidation because of Black's sloppy methods and the constant abuse of his authority.

His lack of response would always be accompanied by a waterfall of cold showers and many, many fists colliding frantically against his ribcage.

As he let his body sink into the warm water, the mercenary threw his head back, allowing the base of his neck to rest against one of the edges of the bathtub – he needed to cleanse his body not only to get rid of all sweat and dirt still polluting the surface of his skin but also, to get rid of the bittersweet events of that infamous decade. Even if he knew it was a mere symbolism, that there was only so much that the water could positively wash away, he still entered the ritual longing to forget the missing doctor, the unfairly murdered wife, the attacks that had shaken the city, each and every single one of the deaths that could have been prevented if only he had been there to face those demons. He still knew it; he was still sure of it: those attacks had been dark messages directed at him - they didn't care about those citizens: they just wanted to get to him.

They had wanted to expose him and they had succeeded, but their strategies had backfired: M'horel had been the only one paying the ultimate price for such despicable actions. Yet Black had been blessed by Kotal's modest, so-called benevolence; and the sole idea of him still breathing, even if behind bars, was enough for the blood in their veins to boil.

The dull knocking on his door compelled him to open his eyes. The water had already grown cold; the first picturesque goosebumps now effectively extended all across his forearms. With rivulets of water still cascading down every corner of his nearly bicentennial complexion, the cowboy mercenary stood up and got out of the bathtub. Exercising his memory with yesteryears' gymnasia, he walked up to the end wall of the bathroom and picked up a towel from the old basket. Brushing the soft material against his impervious skin, he quickly dried his limbs only allowing a few stray droplets to still travel the length of his body rather carelessly.

"The Kahn is waiting," Yvo sentenced, still waiting on the other side of the door.

Black discarded the wet towel on the floor as he left the bathroom and came back to the conundrum still waiting for him inside his wardrobe. The idea had always been present throughout the years spent in prison: changing his style was now mandatory; the man subjugated by those clothes was not the same man emerging from the claws of prolonged captivity now. Frivolous as it was, and besides his taste for weapons, alcohol and cigarettes, over the years he had also developed a taste for clothes: in fact, he had managed to create his very own, private collection of garments; souvenirs from confiscations and hold-ups, mementos from a brighter past. Yet even if he had found all those garments to be appealing enough for him to collect them in the first place, he had never actually seen them all becoming into a whole outfit before his eyes. The individual pieces of that puzzle had seemed alien back then; the combined result of all those garments placed together was far too distant from the image he had crafted for himself.

But now it seemed like a particularly good occasion for that outfit to come out and play and the constant knocking on his door precipitated his decision.

"Comin'," the gunman mumbled as he finished the old task of protecting his eyes behind dense clouds of kohl.

The man that Yvo had been waiting at the other side of the door had little to do with the actual subject he was supposed to escort to the Throne Room now. Combat boots and grey trousers were accompanied by a matching grey, tight jacket. No bandana, no mask; just a burgundy front extended all the way up until its thick edges had positively concealed the lower half of the face staring right back at him. The make-up was familiar, but even if they had already grown accustomed to that infamous new hairstyle thanks to the prison guards' bitter sense of humor, the truth was that little to nothing remained of the Erron Black they all remembered.

They walked in complete silence - not only because stupor was getting the best of Yvo but also because Black was beginning to feel as if his time talking to pawns had surreptitiously met its end. It was time to face the Kahn, to actually talk to the only man still balancing all his possible futures in the pendulum of his hands.

Yet silence stretched itself even farther the moment the duo entered the Throne Room. It had been nearly nine years of absence and oblivion and that man marching towards the emperor now was a living statement: he had made the most out of his training sessions, that much seemed obvious by now. He had focused all of his energy into getting ready to hunt down those bastards and make them pay for taking Zar away from him. He was ready now, as ready as can be, and the emperor quickly got the message: the time for preparations was over - Black was ready: his muscles were ready, his rigid jawline was ready, the impersonality encysted deep inside those cold eyes of his was ready.

The mercenary took a few moments to absorb his surroundings: the Throne Room hadn't changed that much since the so-called trial yet there were some alterations here and there, like subtle decoys screaming quietly about an image that needed to be restored. He chuckled, involuntarily, as he approached the table placed in the center of the room – not only his own personal image had changed: now there were warriors' sculptures displayed upon tall, marble-like pillars. Weapons, encrusted in large shields, were decorating the walls. It seemed this brand-new museum of war was meant to remind everyone about the true power held by the emperor of Outworld but there was more to it – it was almost as if all those symbols had been placed there for another reason: maybe it was to help remind the Emperor that he himself had once been a warrior; that no matter if all those political affairs going on around him had covered his spirit under a thick layer of bureaucracy, the fighter was still in there, thriving to get out.

The emperor signaled Black to take a seat at the opposite end of the table; his calm demeanor quickly dissipating his evident surprise. Yvo followed the mercenary, sitting down right next to him even if the tiny barrister was still having a hard time trying to intercept all those cold glances traveling the length of the table.

"I assume you may think that, during your absence, this office has besmirched your name and reputation," the emperor began.

No  _hello_ , no  _welcome back_.

"I guarantee you; This Office did not. Whatever you may find out there in the streets, whatever it is that their voices have to say about you, it is completely volitional."

There it was again, the politician. Not the emperor, not the warrior, not even his former employer. Just a dull, lackluster politician.

Black looked over his shoulder: Yvo was visibly nervous; tension was making the barrister fidget in his chair.

"Let's get this over with, what's it gonna be?" The gunslinger sentenced coldly, his eyes returning to the Kahn. The emperor raised an eyebrow to salute the old Erron Black still existing inside that buffed up vessel staring right back at him – no matter how irritating that man was, it was reassuring for Kotal to address Black’s former personality still fighting its way out as a vivid reality.

"Do you still want to work for This Office?" Even if he was Outworld's highest authority, a part of him knew that such a nodal point needed to be sorted out rather quickly but Kotal's many doubts were met with relief the second Black nodded wordlessly to his question. Even if it had been a gesture of pure politeness on his part, the emperor did not want to expose his image to those ineffable rumors that could imply that he had chosen to keep Black against the ex-Earthrealmer's will.

Kotal gathered his hands together on the table, his long fingers intertwining around each other: "Alright. Shall we proceed, then?"

Erron nodded in silence once again but, this time, he couldn't help but notice the gloomy expression contaminating Yvo's visage. He could even swear there were several drops of sweat already running down the barrister's temples.

"You will be designated to the 53M Garrison. We've just been told they have an opening – one of the guards is retiring," the emperor informed Black but if he could have seen behind the burgundy covering up the gunman's lower part of his face, he would have been met with nothing but apathy and discord.

It is always  _another_  peace, and it is never that  _simple_.

He could have yelled, showed himself offended by Kotal's strategies and shady schemes, but he chose to remain silent. His wiser side understood, rather quickly, that his silence could be far more unsettling than his outspoken protests.

"Your new group patrols the outskirts of Z'unkahrah," Yvo finally intervened, though still visibly nervous. It didn't escape Black's reasoning, though, that the description used by the barrister was far more embellished than the way most Outworlders would choose to talk about the suburbs: he knew patrolling that part of the city had nothing to do with his previous, more privileged duties. Now he was only going to act as just another bloodhound dog, rummaging his way through Z'unkahrah's most despicable dregs.

The emperor tapped his fingers on the table – it was clear that Black's complete lack of response was making him feel uneasy.

"You'll report every day to your superior and, in time, if his reports are satisfactory enough for This Office, you shall obtain your old job back," Kotal explained. "It is important, son, that you see this decision as a conciliatory measure between This Office and yourself – we're not trying to punish you; we believe those years spent in prison were punishment enough for you. Still, we support the idea that you must earn your way back," the emperor went on, "I gave way too much power to a man corrupted by greed back then but I'm positive you can still be redeemed – and if you can be redeemed, son, then This Office can be redeemed as well."

There it was, Black finally pondered, the Politian taking over.

A reformed Black still ensured a brave, certain emperor – his leadership affirmed; untouched. What the Kahn did not suspect was that a man as old as Black had already heard it all, and all those futile attempts of hiding Kotal's true authority behind the seemingly legitimized empowerment of  _His Office_  were nothing but a poorly constructed masquerade that could not prevent those cold eyes from seeing the obvious: Black's release was meant to rise all sorts of rumors and repercussions; some of them could even be powerful enough to threaten the emperor's political judgment. So this was the best chance Kotal was ever going to get to finally balance the scales in his favor: not only he would be seen as a smart leader; capable of providing redemption for a corrupted enforcer, but he would also be perceived as a clever tactician, moving each piece in his intricate chess board with the prestige of a professional.

It was amusing for Black to actually be able to see right through his ex and brand new employer; to smell his fear and his doubts, to be able to capture the very essence of his uneasiness. As stoic as the Osh-Tekk's demeanor seemed to be, the truth was that Black's mere presence was frightening now, forcing the emperor to seek shelter under the comfortable cover of Outworld's political system.

"Do you understand, son?" Kotal asked, as if trying to summon Black inside his own machinations.

 _Son_ … it made him sick to the stomach. Even if he understood that Kotal was trying his best to sugar-coat his words, it still made him feel nauseous.

" _Rest now, son… I myself will come back for you tomorrow, to escort you to your wife's funeral."_

Kotal had never returned.

Complete unaware of Black’s inner turmoil the emperor went on, completely unaware of Black's true feelings, completely unaware of the fact that all that bottled-up rancor was finally beginning to take its toll on the mercenary.

"I need an answer, Erron - do you understand? Do you concur that this is what's best for everyone, _son_?"

 _Son_ … the simple elocution brushed against his impervious skin once more but far from being as soothing as a gentle caress, it felt more like an obscure hand grabbing him by his neck and forcing him to subjugate his spirit. Maybe it was because of how reluctant he had always felt towards that word, especially when enunciated by a male voice. Maybe it was because the only man that should have called him his son had been a coffee-eyed demon who had mercilessly raped his mother when she was barely thirteen years old.

The offspring of a whore and a demon… The devil; in the flesh.

He had felt that way many times before but now his every elucubration was finally getting shaped after that malicious word; the very notion that Kotal's throat had just procured. He had walked the worlds and watched them all wither and die. War after war, peace after peace. Generations buried by generations that had gotten subsequently buried by yet another generation. Still, the Kahn's impertinence had crystallized the idea; the potent reclaiming of his nature becoming nearly obvious, as if he had been finally readied to visualize himself as an eternal punisher, as an evergreen seed of evil – as the true Ruler of Limbo.

Black crossed his arms over his chest rather despondently, his body language becoming as readable as an open book: the nerve of those voices calling him their son, how could they? He had already been there, his boots marching on the ground of all of those worlds they were now trying to claim as their own; way before they had even existed, and way before they had even begun floating inside their fathers' testicles. And still, with one last glance over at Yvo and his diminishing figure, the cowboy finally understood that the worst was yet to come. He nodded one more time, still soundlessly but now, more determined than before. He took a moment for his cold, coffee-colored stare to find an anchor in the barrister's taciturn, gloomy expression.

Then he finally spoke up:

"What about my money?"

With a nearly unnoticeable gulp, Yvo suddenly stopped fidgeting and produced an artificial yet rather stoic façade - yet his small hands were still giving him away; his fingers intertwined, his sweaty palms locked but still visibly shaky. Kotal Kahn beckoned the barrister as if urging the small man to speak and Black directed his undivided attention towards Yvo then, finding the tiny barrister's evident uneasiness rather amusing. In a way, it almost seemed as if the interaction between the two had been previously rehearsed.

"Well," Yvo began after clearing his throat, "your salary now is going to be inferior in comparison to your previous earnings."

"I know that. But I asked  _what about my money_?"

"I'm afraid you…" Terror in his voice, the barrister stopped and looked at the Kahn as if expecting Outworld's highest authority to back him up. Yet the emperor remained imperturbable, crossing his arms over his broad chest. Yvo swallowed hard; the sound and the visible motion of his neck and throat adjusting to the incoming fluid becoming clear sings that he was frightened to tell the truth. Finding himself all alone between a potentially enraged Erron Black and a completely uncooperative Kotal Kahn, the barrister finally confessed:

"You don't have any money."

"Come again," Black stood up abruptly and grabbed the barrister by his blue tunic; the ire exhibited inside those eyes screaming silently at him – those pupils, finding their irascible pleasure in the barrister's shivering form, were informing him that they were ready to eat him alive.

"He said you don't have any money," the emperor finally intervened. "Now put him down, Black."

The mercenary let Yvo fall down to the ground yet his curled-up fists collided brutally against the table still standing right in front of him.

"You said my salary was meant to be perceived as a pension for Zar, what happened to my incomes?" He questioned, barely keeping his cool.

The barrister stood up and dragged his fallen chair away from Black. He didn't sit back down, though; he merely reduced himself to be a silent spectator, gluing his back to a distant wall and hoping his insignificant figure could just vanish into thin air.

Kotal Kahn eyed Black with a coldness the barrister had never seen before. Then he opened a broad, blue palm for  _that particular treasure_  to be freed from all bindings. The second coin, the one he had confiscated from M'horel during the trial that had taken place in that very same room nearly a decade ago, was still exhibiting a golden luster that simply refused to get extinguished by the inclement passing of the years.

After contemplating the object with peculiar fondness, the emperor finally let it roll across the table; all the way, for that petulant, straight trajectory to finally meet Black's enraged fist. The coin connected with the ex-Earthrealmer's warm skin then began spiraling – the dance, tranquil at first but frantic towards the end of its tether. Shapes growing more and more frenetic in the catastrophic ballet of his own misfortune as the golden coin swirled away in front of his eyes.

Until it finally stopped, landing flat on one side, right in front of Black's mesmerized vision.

That was the fate of the coins, then – they were finally being reunited after their tiresome odyssey. One of them was now charred, with one of its sides nearly melted thanks to the mercenary's convoluted emotions – the other was still stained with blood. Those coins had become more than just money: they were now the engines of this story, the currency of many truths and lies. They had been playing those parts for more than a decade and now, it was finally time for them to rest.

"You should call yourself lucky – that should have been your only payment," the emperor's snarly voice shook the stupefied man out of his reverie. "The money we gave to your wife as a pension to compensate for her losses during your imprisonment has already been expended. After she passed, we found out she hadn't touched that money at all so we decided that, since you couldn't leave your cell to pay your final respects, the least you could do for your fallen wife was to use that money to pay for her funeral."

Black opened his mouth to protest but the all the words invading his throat were just too desultory to be said out loud so he decided not to let his emotions speak out for him. In a way they were right; he had no real objections: at least he had done  _something_  for her.

"What about the rest of my money?" he asked after a moment of silent contemplation. "The money I should have received after she died?"

"Well, that pension was only meant to help your wife," the emperor began and the mercenary sat back down as he eyed him suspiciously: his unreadable expression was forcing the Kahn to deepen his explanation: "After she died, we stopped validating your wages because,  _technically_ , you were unemployed."

It took him a moment to finally wrap his head around the idea: they had played him. And now he was being forced to make ends meet with nothing but a minimum wage and zero privileges.

"Erron, if you allow me…" Yvo finally managed to say, "since Zar was an employee of the Barristers' Office, and she was in the official payroll, I can try to process a pension for you now that you're her widower."

The mercenary shook his head in silence; his thoughts were now a sticky cobweb of bitter memories and unresolved emotions: how could he ever accept her money now? How could he ever bring himself to experience such a spectacular fall?

"No," he said, fighting the irony embedded inside Yvo's proposal. He had tried to convince her to use his money back then and she had said no – she hadn't touched a single coin. He just couldn't accept that pension now. There was him, finally,  _earning_  his freedom. "I accept your terms – but I won't be staying in the Palace," he finally said, his baritone voice lower now, brushing the edges of a whisper.

"Is it because of Zar?" the barrister asked, "we can give you another room."

Black shook his head again, his eyes returning to the monumental figure of the impassive Kahn staring back at him even if his words were aimed for the concerned barrister.

"He said I need to  _earn_  my way back here; I assume that includes my stay in  _your_  Palace."

"It is  _Outworld's_  Palace," Kotal retorted.

"No, sir. I'm afraid it’s not."

The cowboy's rather simple answer was far more dangerous than expected: there he was; a man fallen from grace that still didn’t hesitate to question Kotal's rule.

"Fine, then," the emperor finally concluded. "Your decision feels only natural to me, you're going to have to make an effort to climb your way back up to the top – everything has always been rather easy for you, Black: way back then, you hadn't done much yet you quickly found yourself sitting right by my side. I just want you to know that you _can_ get back there – you shall see, in time, that hard work and dedication always pays off. Now it is time for you to begin anew, on your own this time. Only your wit and your skills shall assist you this time." The emperor's seemingly paternal speech met his end rather prematurely: "That means  _no loose ends this time_ , Black."

The ex-Earthrealmer tilted his head yet it wasn't a sign of confusion: he was finally able to see the whole picture.

"I know the second you walk out that door you're going to start hunting them down: the ones responsible for Zar's death. I know it is absolutely pointless to try to tell you not to do so; you have basically trained your body for this bloodthirsty quest. But before you do anything, I compel you to stop and reconsider the events of your own past: remember what happened last time you decided to act alone - you ended up wounded, nearly bleeding to death, unraveling the very roots of this entire situation. Remember what happened the last time you abused your power… this is the only warning you shall be getting from This Office:  _no loose ends this time_."

Black's mouth produced a scornful grin under the burgundy still secluding his lips from the world outside – his imminent participation in the affairs of the 53M Garrison were a win-win situation for nearly everyone: the emperor had subtly allowed him to unleash his own twisted hell all across the city; he had facilitated his sole mission and he was not going to stop him or intervene. By hunting down those people, he would also be helping the emperor: it didn't take a mastermind to understand that the ones responsible for Zarrabayeusse's demise were intrinsically connected to the group of people that had attacked the city so finding Zar's assassins also implied solving the riddle still engulfing the realm. He still was a pawn trapped inside Kotal's intricate strategies yet now he had been graced with secrecy. Kotal had just turned him into a silent hitman; he would be in the spotlight no more – he would now be moving inside the limits of a greyish, legitimized shadow.

"We still don't know much about the true ramifications of this organization," the Kahn went on, "but we do know how hard it was for us to finally establish these peaceful bridges connecting us with Earthrealm. We do know how hard it was for us to conceal from their prying eyes that an invisible enemy had gotten us on our knees… we do know how hard it was to keep from them the fact that we could have faced the beginning of yet another civil war. Whatever you do, do not burn those bridges down, Black."

The Population Census had indeed helped. Earthrealmers were no longer a problem for Outworld and the Special Forces had been rewarded with a long queue of long-lost criminals that had once escaped their sights and abandoned the realm.

Ferra had told him during one of her visits: there had been one final attack – about a year after Zar's death – but Outworld's defenses had prevailed back then, nullifying the explosives. The Rebel-Seekers had been quiet ever since that night but only a fool could believe they were done. They simply weren't. They had only chosen to shelter their filthy bodies in the shadows of a tenebrous peace.

It is always  _another_  peace…

Black nodded, understanding his new role.

"Where do I get my uniform and my skull mask?" he demanded, finally.

"You won't be wearing any of those things," Kotal sentenced.

Of course, Black realized grimly. The Kahn wanted everyone to know he had been demoted to a lower league. There it was, at last - it just couldn't be that  _simple_ : he was now finally  _earning_  his freedom.

"Any requests?" the emperor asked, the serious tone he was offering now was quickly indicating Black that their meeting was almost over. Black considered his options until he finally decided to speak up, requesting the only thing that was still bittering up his heart.

"I want Aalem's body to be transferred to the family crypt where it belongs."

The Kahn shook his head yet, before he was able to speak, the barrister took the lead: "I'm afraid that's not possible. The crypt has already been sealed," Yvo explained.

Infuriated, Black aimed his anger towards Kotal: "You knew Aalem was dead."

"You never mentioned there was a body," the Kahn retorted effortlessly.

"Dead people don't just  _evaporate_ ," Black spat through clenched teeth as the image of Henry invaded his thoughts.

"Zarrabayeusse was the last member of the family lineage. That's why the family crypt got sealed – there's no one left," Yvo explained, conciliatorily.

"I am…  _was…_  part of the family too."

"So you think you'll die before the whole cemetery disappears? Please, Black… you'll be here long after that happens…" Kotal sentenced coldly, finally using Black's longevity against him.

Being buried in the Land of the Fallen was a privilege reserved solely for only a few. Way back then, when Kotal decided not only to include Dexitis in that special zone of the cemetery but to also open a crypt for his whole family, the idea behind the Kahn's motives had been intriguing for Black, to say the least. Kotal appreciated Dexitis – maybe even more than Black could care to admit. The blacksmith's machinations and plans had helped the Osh-Tekk representative during the conflicted times of his rise to the power, that much was true, yet none of the people resting for all eternity inside that family crypt met the qualifications required to enter the Land of the Fallen: neither they had been warriors nor they had died in Kombat.

Black still remembered the place; it wasn't as intimidatingly magnificent as Shao Kahn's mausoleum or the catacombs surrounding it – it was more like a small town filled with low, lugubrious buildings, morbid and gloomy enough to freeze the blood running through his veins.

A sealed crypt looked exactly like all those bricked up mausoleums he had seen back in Earthrealm, and knowing his own devilish ways had been involved in all of their deaths, the mercenary finally found himself wondering why those crypts, why those mausoleums needed to be sealed at all – were they preventing someone from getting in or were they actually preventing someone – something – from getting out?

"You should have made this request earlier," Kotal reflected, the sordid voice of the emperor brought the cowboy back to reality, "while there still was time."

Time… Black pondered in silence as he stood up and left the Throne Room; the dead have all the time in the world…

He went back to his old bedchamber and used his old Tarkatan Blade to break through a selection of floorboards: his savings were still there, waiting for him – all those years of precaution and speculation had finally paid off. He hid the small brownish bags inside his jacket and sat down on the bed: with his old, damaged box of memories resting on his lap, the man produced the second coin from his pocket and placed it inside the box: finally, both coins had returned to their original owner. Then the realization hit him, as his eyes gradually lost focus: Zar had saved his box from the fire on the same night M'horel decided to attack the couple. That's why she was there that night; she must have realized that his memories were simply too precious to let them be consumed by the vindictive flames of his own convoluted emotions. She must have been waiting for him – waiting to talk some sense into him, to make him realize that no matter the pain, he could never get rid of the true man still resting inside.

The only thing she had found that night had been an undeserved attack – the very beginning of her own end.

Sad and upset, the mercenary swallowed his pride as he remembered why he had accepted the Kahn's offer: she was the reason why; she was now the fuel driving him. He couldn't just leave and start anew someplace else: he needed to find them and make them pay.

He packed his bags and left the Palace as Zar's voice assaulted him with the echoes of a truth that was now too evident to be ignored:

" _You may see this place as the epitome of power but all I see is the fake idol that took everything and everyone away from me."_

He should have listened.

* * *

  **Ard'ahain**

* * *

Back into the saddle again, the cowboy was left with no other choice but to accept that those dusty streets, that those ancient-looking neighborhoods he was now forced to patrol every single day looked very much like his beloved Old West. The feeling of belonging again in that no man's land was as ironic as it was unprecedented: like that time, back in the seventies, everything had changed for him and yet, deep down, he still could feel the same old contradiction placing him amongst all anomalies; making a living museum out of him.

It is always  _another_  peace…

This peace he had found was silent and weak like a disease slowly spreading its nefarious wings before getting ready to soar. This peace was fragile and obscure, in perfect concordance with the so-called war that still had them all feeling like defeated hostages walking on thin ice.

Away from the comforting luxuries of the Palace by his own volition, Black rented himself a small room within a filthy hovel near the 53 Garrison station – with no windows and only enough space for him to have a cot, a chair, and a small bathroom, this new-found simplicity was somehow soothing for him now that his routine had been reduced to reporting himself each morning to his superior like a regular soldier before walking down those dusty streets for as long as his eyes could see the sun setting on the horizon before him.

Completely immersed in the rent-a-thug system reining all over the lower spheres of Kotal's rule, his new colleagues only seemed interested in making him feel unwelcomed. He was paying the price of being an Earthrealmer but that wasn't all: it was almost as if those simple soldiers were now fully determined to find their joy in his misery – he had been once placed in a better, higher position, both in rank and wage, so now watching him struggle each day with little money and even fewer resources to perform his job was somehow amusing for them, as if addressing the cowboy’s impoverished condition could somehow mitigate their own misfortune.

There was mistrust in Black: he knew most of those soldiers that were now walking down those same streets with him could have been easily tempted by Kotal's promised paradise… when the emperor failed to deliver, many of those men could have debated inside their minds whether to turn their backs on Outworld's highest authority or not.

Many of them could be Rebel-Seekers still in disguise.

Yet there was another class; an even lower cast than the simple soldiers marching right next to him: the common citizens of those neighborhoods. Their expressions had changed drastically the minute their eyes had spotted Black out there in the streets again – it was clear they still resented him, yet ironically enough, people seemed to be more afraid of him now than they had been in the past. The thought was unsettling for the troubled marksman but still, it was easy for him to see that, for most of the citizens, there was something disturbing about his presence - even with his authority severed and his power limited.

Something about him still frightened them.

It only took him a couple of days to realize that his superior was an ass: the man hated his guts. He was supposed to review his skills, his performance, his degree of commitment to the cause, his integrity, his loyalty and his manners yet the hatred in those cold, black eyes was subtly letting the cowboy know that no matter how many people he could manage to help, no matter how many criminals he could catch, his reports were never going to be satisfactory.

" _You can earn your way back…"_

Yeah, good luck with that.

The first week was a never-ending nightmare filled with terrorized visages and scornful comments. The second week quickly turned into the living embodiment of his coldness and his capability to disassociate himself from all their bullshit. The third week had already felt old and weary, until one hot afternoon, right before sunset, he saw a couple of very old Outworlders pleading for help to a bunch of obnoxious soldiers.

He turned his back on them.

Yet their voices, supplicating, were met with nothing but indifference.

As he began to walk down the streets, headed for the station and ready to call it a day, the mercenary felt a soft hand landing on his broad shoulders and weakly tugging on his jacket. He turned around and took a good look at them: a man and a woman, visibly old and worried, had turned to him for help now that the rest of the soldiers had decided not to get involved.

They must have been truly desperate, the cowboy pondered, already acknowledging the fact that no-one in their right minds would ever go to him for help.

"Astegu sea. Ponyat'le kin-le - Ard'ahain," the old woman told him, her hand gradually slipping from his body.

The mercenary furrowed his brow – his rusted Native Outworlder was not enough to understand what she was trying to tell him.

"She's asking for help, can you help us find Ard'ahain?" the old man translated her words for Black to understand.

"I get that she's asking for help," the gunslinger sentenced despondently, yet there was something else inside their eyes; a potent worry – an unparalleled concern. "Who is Ard'ahain?"

"Our granddaughter," the man said.

"Jinta'lonbu, ma, ma seriouni laba," the woman yelled, "turiu me sea la."

The old man sighed as he moved his hands and signaled the woman that from that point on, he would be the one doing all the talking.

"I am Selice, this is my wife Nevena," the concerned grandfather offered an introduction for the puzzled gunslinger. "Our granddaughter is missing, please help us find her. She's nineteen, she was talking to a friend yesterday morning – but she never returned home."

Black cocked his head slightly, secretly engaged yet still trying to show his indifference.

His mouth betrayed him: "Do you have a picture of her?"

The man shook his head causing the gunslinger to roll his eyes in a rather irreverent way.

"Is she hot?"

He hated himself for having the nerve to allow his mouth to say such words out loud but he knew how things were down those dangerous streets. The old man eyed him suspiciously then offered him a dubious look.

"Fine, come with me," Black ordered the man. "Take me to this  _friend'_ s house."

As both men began to march, the old lady grabbed Black by his forearm and forced him to turn around again: with a muted mouth and a genuine expression of gratitude, she offered him candy. The gesture was both endearing and heart-breaking for the mercenary. Black knew they didn't have any money to offer yet they felt compelled to offer him  _something_  in return for his assistance all the same. In a way, those sweets that looked pretty much like small butterscotches were nothing but a silent explanation of how the garrisons were constantly trying to blackmail and corrupt the people they were supposed to protect. It was all too natural now for the citizens to offer whatever little they had in order to receive some sort of protection or help, and that disgusting reality made Black remember those cold-blooded creditors that had once offered their so-called assistance to Good Old Jacob only to hunt him down like a wounded animal the second the money stopped traveling from the saloon to the insides of their pockets.

Black refused to accept the sweets yet the grandmother took one and placed it inside Black's pocket. The mercenary looked down and thanked her, ashamed, as he turned around once more.

The ancient cowboy and the desperate grandfather walked together, then, as they were headed for the friend's house. The teenage Outworlder didn't have the slightest clue about her missing friend's whereabouts, but she mentioned both girls had been talking to a group of boys the day before. She told them where to find them and they left – Black's suspicions already leading him to that dreadful place; especially now that he had seen the friend with his own eyes: according to Outworld's beauty standards, the friend was  _ugly_.

And ugly meant  _safe_.

It wasn't hard for the duo to find the group of boys chatting carelessly in the street – yet none of them had seen the missing girl. Black tried his best to make sure they all understood that partaking in a kidnapping, even if indirectly, was still a punishable crime and suddenly, out of the blue, one of the boys began to remember: he had seen Ard'ahain, but she had been talking to another man – an old neighbor of his.

The neighbor in question wasn't all that cooperative.

A wise, grumpy old man was not as easily intimidated by a single soldier as a bunch of wild teenagers. Helpless, Black already feared they had reached a dead end in the shape of that man standing right in front of them when the worried grandfather stepped up and finally connected with the neighbor – it seemed as if they could understand each other,  _from grandpa to grandpa_ : the man had seen Ard'ahain – and more than just once. She was dating the boy next door.

The boy next door, her so-called boyfriend, had given her up for a handful of coins.

All paths were leading him back to that dreadful place: the House of Pleasure, established decades ago in the heart of the neighborhood. In a way, it was pretty much like The Wise Bird – the place was swaying its way somewhere in between a saloon and a brothel where men could have a drink downstairs or pay for another type of  _services_ upstairs, inside the many rooms along that dimly lit corridor.

He had never been a habitué, yet he had been there, more than once, trying to find satisfaction in the comfort of strangers. He hated the place – the smell, the sights; it was all too pathetic for him to actually enjoy his brief escapades, yet he had been there nonetheless, he had  _paid for those services_ …

Things had changed for him the second Dexitis told him that they were actually planning to give up Zar; that they were ready to turn her into a whore because, otherwise, she was never going to leave the house. Worried about the woman, he had chosen to marry her and save her from such undesirable future. He never returned to the place after getting married to Zar yet the uneasiness remained all the same, in the back of his mind, knowing that all of those women exhibited there as lackluster treasures had probably been delivered to that awful place by the ones they had loved the most.

Black and the old man entered the House of Pleasure only to find Rosario, the manager, sitting behind the bar.

"We are looking for a nineteen-year-old girl, the name is Ard'ahain – we know she's here," Black informed her.

Rosario stood up and allowed her hands to land on the cowboy's broad shoulders: "I wasn't expecting to see you, Black – but as lovely as this visit of yours may be, I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. We haven't had any new initiations in the last couple of months, my dear."

The girl's grandfather was already losing hope, but the mercenary wasn't ready to give up just yet.

"I wasn't expecting to see you either, Rosario – I thought the Census had taken you away," he teased the nearly seventy-year-old woman as she sat back down.

"I thought the same about you, my dear. But… oh, yes, you were in prison," she fought back.

"Don't know what you're talking about, Ros… even if I'm a widower now I'm still a naturalized Outworlder – and not only by marriage; but also by Royal Decree."

"Good for you, boy. I'm an Outworlder, born and bred, so I don't really see the point of this lovely exchange of ours."

"You're an Outworlder…" Black spat disdainfully, "that's why your name is a Spanish word, right? That's why your name encompasses one of the most sacred idols in the entire Catholic credo – so very Outworlder of you,  _my dear_." He outstretched one of his arms and snatched the white hat she was wearing – his look now complete, the souvenir for this little expedition already anticipating his victorious conclusion.

"Cut the crap and give me the girl."

"Find her," she challenged him seductively as she shrugged even if deep down the woman already knew she had lost.

The gunslinger and the grandfather went upstairs and began searching for the girl – it didn't take them long to find her as she was being introduced to some customers who were about to enter one of the many rooms. The girl ran and wrapped her arms around her sobbing grandfather – the man thanked Black and the mercenary watched them in silence as the reunited relatives quickly abandoned the filthy place.

Satisfied with himself, Black began to walk towards the staircase as well, already ready to leave when a distant echo caught his attention.

The voice; he couldn't place it – yet as alien as it sounded, it was intrinsically familiar.

He followed the sounds of that unpleasant kind of pleasure as he ventured his body farther into the corridor; the many closed doors becoming instant riddles for his senses to solve them all.

That foreign yet somehow familiar whimpering was driving him: one door, two doors, three doors, four doors. He let the palm of his hands caress the only barrier separating him from the source of his sudden commotion – the feeling stirring inside of him only intensified as seconds went by; such ecstasy, such an ignited bonfire was already consuming him, scorching his skin and depriving him of all possible reasoning.

One last moan quickly became a quiet sob and suddenly all pleasure was gone and all that was there for him to hear was a voice calling him on with all its strength, even if not addressing him in particular. The vicious screams erupting from another man's throat quickly becoming alarming, agonizingly hurtful. Black pushed the last door open only to find the source of his enchantment and his sorrow scattered all over the bed. The unsatisfied customer was yelling at her.

"Earthrealm scum…"

Unbeknownst to them, the mercenary was watching the scene with eyes full of disbelief. The woman was pleading the customer to stop yet the furious man was nowhere near finished. He grabbed the naked woman by her legs and forced her to sit up straight on the bed, her black hair cascading down her pale shoulders, covering her breasts, landing on her stomach.

"I paid for it, bitch," was the last thing he said before slapping her hard across the face, the inertia driving her neck causing the back of her head to hit the wall behind the bed – the blackout overcame her abruptly; those pristine, rich blue eyes were closed now.

Infuriated, like a blinded bull ready to strike, Black grabbed the man by the shoulders and tossed him out of the room – he punched that filthy being until his deranged eyes were unable to distinguish his own blood from the customer's then he pushed the bastard downstairs for Rosario to take out the trash: one thing was morbidly comforting about the woman: she was very protective of  _her girls_.

After using his trousers to wipe the unwanted blood still contaminating his hands, Black went back to the room and checked on the woman: she wasn't dead; she had just fainted due to the hard impact of having her head colliding against the wall. He rocked her in his arms tenderly, removing those rebel locks of pitch-black hair from her face.

Amanda had been his mystery – the mystery of God for the devil to play human. She had become his own private system of faith, his moral compass; the abyss in which he had lost himself during the majority of his years. Yet the devil knew that solving that mystery was an unholy act; a deviation of his faith. If one has total certainty about faith, then faith simply ceases to exist.

As he continued to rock her in his arms, he understood his mystery of God had gone nowhere. There she was, with her eyes closed and breathing peacefully against his warm chest. The mystery of God for the devil to play human had found its continuation in the shape of that doctor; in her consuming gaze and her still unexplored body.

Allowing her head to rest in the soft hollow between his neck and his shoulder, the mercenary tightened his embrace as his trembling hands began to caress Alexandra's forehead, waiting for the woman to open her eyes.


	32. Bygones

Interlude

Chapter XXXII

**Bygones**

**(Six Degrees of Separation – Side B)**

* * *

  _"Eighty years, an old lady now, sitting on the front porch_  
_Watching the clouds roll by_  
_They remind her of her lover, how he left her, and of times long ago,_  
_When she used color carelessly, painted his portrait_  
_A thousand times, or maybe just his smile,_  
_Her and her canvas would follow him wherever he would go_

 _'Cause they were painters and they were painting themselves_  
_A lovely world."_

Painters – Jewel Kilcher

* * *

  **I – Genesis**

_(The creation and the fall)_

* * *

[November 13th, 1859]

The ceremony was short and attended only by a few relatives and a selected handful of very close friends. The newly-weds quickly understood the protocol of such a crucial social event and, as politely as possible, thanked them all for coming. Yet only one of them expressed their gratitude with a big, toothy smile. The other fifty percent of the couple chose to remain as impartial, as distant as her troubled spirit allowed her to be.

Amanda Taggart was no more. Amanda Farindon had taken her place and the transition was, as expected, painful and undesired.

Slowness enveloped her body as the simple layers of her white dress kissed the ground. As if suspended in time and space, still mourning her dying love, the girl approached the bed with eyes that showed no affection, no sympathy, not a single sign to let her brand new husband know that she actually cared for him.

They had only shared a few moments. Everything had happened so fast. Now they were married, and that golden ring attached to her finger was proclaiming her as private property – only it was the wrong owner the one staring right back at her from the bed.

The barber seemed nervous; little remained of his determination and his unfunded urgency. They were finally alone now; husband and wife entering their bedroom for the first time yet they both were feeling the peculiar remnants of misplaced emotions and mixed up realities: the woman could still feel the warm skin of her lover caressing every inch of her body – she knew that the man waiting for her to join him on the bed had nothing to do with that mystified love she had lost only hours ago. But the magic of those hands still persisted, somehow, as if the spirit of those fingers was now trapped deep inside her soul. The barber was staring intently at her but that look upon his face had little to do with lust: in a way, it was as if the man was afraid of that pale white skin of hers.

As if his unwanted touch could shatter her, contaminate her.

The man was no fool. He knew she wasn't in love with him, knew she didn’t love him.

He beckoned the young lady to come over and join him on the bed – a part of him was still hoping that, with enough patience and time, Amanda could actually develop feelings for him so he treated her kindly, almost as if willing to show her what it felt like, for a precious little creature like her, to venture the world of adulthood.

The girl sighed, discontented, but closed her eyes and joined her husband nonetheless. If anything, it was better to get this over with as soon as possible. The barber laid her on her back as he took a minute to observe her entire geography with eyes full of tenderness: her legs were pressed hard and she was still covering her breasts with her arms but it was the look of resignation reigning all over her expression the one true thing that gave her away: she would not fight this, she knew, deep inside she had always known - most things could be bargained in a marriage… but the sacred fires of the wedding night could not.

The old man mumbled nearly inaudible words of reassurance in her ear: maybe he was trying to make her feel more comfortable around him or maybe he was simply trying to embed some courage inside his own ears. Yet Amanda paid no mind. She simply rested her head on the pillow as her eyes gradually lost focus. She didn't watch him undress. Had she watched him, she would have noticed his torpid movements and his clumsy rhythm slowly taking over his motility. The barber, Mr. William Farindon, her  _husband_ , could only offer her a body already punished by time and age, with wrinkles and creases; a weakened body, a sick body. The old man ghosted over Amanda's body using his elbows at the sides of her shoulders to maintain his fragile balance but the sight of such indifferent joviality was almost mesmerizing for him; that pale skin of hers, ungraced by the blushing commotion that only shyness can bring, was reminding him of his own lost youth. The man positioned himself on top of her in a rather careful fashion yet his decaying body felt light as a feather for her. Farindon caressed her temples then guided her chin up with his index finger and placed a soft kiss on her lips – such mistrust, such coldness in her eyes were indicating him that whatever he was planning to do with her that night, he would be doing it on his own – the girl would stay there, but she was determined to be nothing but a silent, necessary participant in the consummation of their marriage; like an involuntary witness, forced to remain in the scene against their own will.

Yet she didn't fight the man, for she knew the barber was not responsible for her predicament. Her own cowardice had anchored her to that man. If only fear and doubt hadn't paralyzed her, she would have left town with Erron the second he showed her those train tickets but her own timid nature had clipped her wings before she even got a chance to soar. Now it was much too late, that man on top of her was about to erase Erron's touch from her no longer dormant body. His unwanted caresses and his unfortunate ministrations were surely about to obliterate any traces of that shared love of theirs – the love they had and the love they made, only moments before the wedding, only moments before losing it all.

Still tensed underneath the barber’s body, Amanda finally began to spread her legs for her husband to claim her as his own; his sex eager to explore hers, her sex still sore from the dream-like experience that had led to her awakening. The man made his way inside her, slowly, trying his best not to hurt her, yet he stopped abruptly and stared into her big, blue eyes.

Amanda looked back at him but far from meeting the tender eyes that had observed her all night, her confused pupils were contrasted by a coldness she had never seen before inside those eyes. The man, still inside of her but frozen in place, was staring at her intently; the first traces of an uncontainable fury beginning to show.

"You are not a virgin."

His body abandoned her body in a matter of seconds. Amanda couldn't talk, couldn't even breathe – she pressed her knees against her stomach as she watched Mr. Farindon tossing her dress disdainfully in her direction. As the man got dressed, his cheeks flushed and flustered with virulent red, he yelled at her to dress up again as well and the girl obeyed, as she put her dress back on, but before she had a chance to arrange each layer of her skirt the man grabbed her violently by one of her wrists and dragged her out of their house.

They walked in silence. His convoluted pace dragging her through the night – those empty streets were the only witnesses to such a decadent scene: the groom was furious and the bride was a mess of white and sweat, her unruly hair and her rebel make-up completed the image for those wild speculations to finally gain form. The short distance separating their house from the Taggarts' home felt like an unbearable punishment she wasn't sure she could endure.

Yet the worst was yet to come.

Nathaniel received the newly-weds with concerned eyes and disbelief: the man eyed his daughter suspiciously then indicated her to wait in the foyer. Both men ventured their bodies into the darkness of the house as Amanda, all by herself, sat on the floor as pools of white sank around her shivering legs. She heard it all, from the initial: _"this isn't what you promised"_ to the final and infamous: _"I married a whore."_ But Nathaniel seemed calm, much to her surprise, as she heard him say that he _"would take care of it."_ After a few moments of ramblings and nonsense, the barber left the house – he didn't even look in her direction, he just walked on by as if that person curled up in fear and shame in the foyer was nothing a but a shadow.

"Amanda, come in," Nathaniel sentenced.

Her father didn't talk to her; according to the defiant look in those eyes, the time for words was already over. The first slap caught her by surprise and her warm tears cascaded down her cheeks out of frustration. The second slap caused a timid stream of crimson to fall from the left corner of her mouth. The third slap made her scream from the top of her lungs even if she knew no one was going to help her. She got on her knees and begged her father to stop but Nathaniel's belt was already swaying mid-air, the ferocious anger in his eyes was the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes.

By the time he was done with her, the first lights of dawn had already begun to grace the horizon. She had endured her torment and now it was time to go back to a husband that despised her. Her trembling and bruised legs guided her on her way back – her dress was dirty and ragged, her auburn hair was a mess. She braced herself with arms that were already stained with purple and red, the same vicious red that was already adorning her cheeks, nose, and mouth.

As she walked on by, nearly disfigured, the first poisonous voices of a new day brushed her ears: _"Her father nearly killed her; she wasn't a virgin anymore when she married the barber, the man claims he never even touched a hair on her head before the wedding night…"_

Town of cowards, she thought, they had heard her scream yet no one had dared to help her.

_"It must have been that boy, that one, you know? From the saloon, the singer's son. Poor kid, so troubled…"_

With eyes full of tears, Amanda's incandescent body was left with no other choice but to remember that tender love of hers – the only one she had truly loved. The one she had lost forever.

* * *

  **II – Exodus**

_(Crossing the Red Sea)_

* * *

[February, 26th, 1860]

The seed of their love was growing inside of her, and with a husband that had never touched her after the truncated wedding night, Amanda knew she had to leave. She had tried to play her part in the sad charade that was her marriage, and even if she knew there wasn't a better way to quiet the rumors that were constantly revolving around the couple than for them to welcome a child into the family, she was certain she could never bring herself to force that child to partake in such a fragile web of lies.

Heavy thoughts crossed her mind as she rested her hands on her growing stomach: the barber was never going to love that baby and there was an even darker obstacle: Nathaniel. A part of her suspected the minute her father found out about her pregnancy, he was going to do anything in his power to interrupt it.

So she packed her bags and left town, determined to find the baby's father – the one she had loved and lost.

No, she never got to see the world – not with him, and not even by herself. She just wandered a smaller portion of that uncharted world; the one demarcated by the frontiers of her Texan state, the one already succumbing to the fiery arms of a war that was about to destroy everything in its wake. With little money and nowhere to go, days turned into weeks and weeks slowly turned into months. She starved during her days only to rummage her hunger through the leftovers of taverns and saloons during her nights. Her skin got grazed by rain and the restless songs of the wind while that warm weight inside her belly bloomed unceasingly: that baby was the only anchor she had now, in a world filled with blood and dangers. Countless strangers walked past her, yet none of them seemed to care for the pregnant woman walking down those ghostly, dusty streets, looking for a missing lover – a missing father – that no one seemed to know.

The cruel and desolated winter made way for spring to come and wash the towns in new hues and colors. Yet her dull eyes could not seem to find solace in the fleeting comfort of flowers and sunny afternoons. Her tired bones led her to Houston; rumor had it that the soldiers were posted in the city – even if the war still wasn't a legitimized reality, the confrontation was already livid all across the country but as much as she tried to summon his name across countless lists and offices, she never managed to find him.

Spring turned to summer, finally, and the heated atmosphere of imminent war and the complete state of uncertainty that always comes with it was beginning to take its toll on her. With not a single coin left, no food and no real leads as to where to go next, Amanda began to quietly give up on her quest. July found her undernourished and defeated – she felt her body going numb, the voices surrounding her becoming mere echoes buzzing in her ears. She reached out for help but people were busy, each individual was left to their own devices; each individual only minded their own business. A woman in her forties, running towards her, was the last thing she saw before she passed out.

She woke up in a comfortable bed, surrounded by the woman who had rescued her and four other women. They introduced themselves as missionaries who were working in the name of what would become, in time, the First Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Texas. She never told them her whole story, only a selection of carefully chosen fragments illustrated their knowledge about that stranger, yet they fed her and sheltered her all the same. She offered them a partially fake identity: Amanda Black, the only identity that felt natural for her now.

She stayed with the German ladies for the rest of her pregnancy but even if she had indeed found sanctuary with those missionaries, a peaceful conclusion for her misadventures was still elusive for the troubled girl. Missus Elisabeth Neumann, the woman who had found her in the streets of Houston quickly noticed that something was wrong with Amanda's pregnancy: her belly was still suspiciously small for a woman who was only a few weeks away from giving birth. With limited knowledge of medicine, the woman understood that Amanda's poor nutritional state could not have been so decisive: there was something more.

Neumann summoned the town doctor to check on the girl's advanced pregnancy and the elderly man quickly confirmed Elisabeth's suspicions: he had seen cases like Amanda's before - the umbilical cord was simply too short to feed the baby. Having to struggle their way for food and nutrients, many babies had given up yet the one growing inside Amanda was still fighting; the girl could feel it kicking and moving inside of her and the women could perceive small movements in her belly – but the doctor was positive: Amanda's malnutrition during most months of her pregnancy had worsened the baby's chances for survival.

The doctor returned twice a week for the rest of the pregnancy to check on the girl and her baby – his advice had finally paid off: absolute rest and a proper diet had indeed helped them.

On August 2nd, 1860, Amanda gave birth to her only child: a rosy-cheeked, auburn-haired and coffee-eyed baby girl: Harriet Elisabeth Black.

* * *

  **III – Leviticus**

_(On sacrifice and moral purity)_

* * *

[November 9th, 1860]

As soon as she recovered from labor, she decided it was time to resume her search. Now more than ever, she needed to find Erron and let him know that he was a father; that they were a family now. Each day, early in the morning, she would leave the baby with the missionaries only to come back right before sunset, hopeless and worried about their future.

This new schedule was not enough for Amanda – as heartbreaking as the very notion was, truth was that Harriet was slowing her down; the mother couldn't get very far because she would have to return and feed her baby, spend time with her, explain to her – even if the baby could not understand a single word - why her father was not coming home with them… days became repetitive and pointless, making her feel as if every single day she was forced to start her search from the very beginning all over again.

The imminence of war began to blacken the towns and all those long lists of names that were yesterday's hope surreptitiously started to point out those ones who were never going to return home. Her quest shifted inadvertently; finding him now was also confirming that he was still out there, that he was still alive. But as months went by, information about the soldiers became vague and unprecise - too many names were added to those terrible lists each day and, subsequently, too many more names were added to those other lists, the lists still clinging to hope and expectations.

Even if he had never told her that he would join the conflict, it was clear for Amanda that exposing himself in the battlefront was the only option left for such a man like her beloved Erron Black – war provided an intrinsic thirst for all the violence he had miraculously managed to repress for as long as humanly possible. Life had taken everything away from him at such a tender age that now the punished son of injustice could only find his comfort inside the brutal embrace of war.

With November came the sad realization that it had been a complete year without seeing each other; the very first year in a concatenation of very lonely years still to come.

Crestfallen and dispirited, Amanda realized that she couldn't keep on living that life. She couldn't expose Harriet to grow up with an identity that wasn't even real; she couldn't allow passing her fears and her pointless hopes onto their daughter – she couldn't force their baby to endure an imminent war without the security that only a proper home could bring, and above all, she couldn't force Harriet to grow up amongst the missionaries - the girl needed a home, a proper home.

Harriet deserved a family. But Amanda couldn't just go back home to the life she had before back in Arroya,  _not with her_. Amanda was positive her daughter needed a family, but Nathaniel and the barber were not the family she had in mind for her.

She stayed up all night, sitting by the window, watching her baby sleep in her arms. It took all of her strength and her determination, but when the yellowish lights of dawn began to shine and swirl their way through the curtains, Amanda was gone. She understood Erron was nothing but a distant memory, too elusive now to be recovered from the maze of her own emotions. That child she was forsaking was the living proof that their love had existed – that she had loved him, and that he had loved her in return. Yet there was no place in her miserable existence for Harriet. The seed of their love was meant to grow inside the nurturing arms of a real family, and the only things she had left to offer her own daughter were the putrid ashes of a broken group of people she could no longer call her own family.

When the missionaries woke up that day, they only found Harriet sleeping peacefully in her cradle and a little note left by Amanda: she wanted them to find a family for her baby – she thanked them for everything they had done for both, the mother and the daughter, and apologized for her cowardice. The same cowardice that had prevented her from running away with  _him_. The same cowardice separating her from their only daughter; forever.

Amanda went back to Arroya only to find that her husband was dying and that her father was crippled. A salve to their pains, having to pay the utmost price for abandoning them; yesterday's princess quickly became the slave in their twisted kind of logic. Yet in the back of her mind, the question lingered: how could she ever bring herself to play such an undesirable role in their unexpected tragedies? How could she ever bring herself to help those men now, when they had caused her so much pain? She had been so naïve to think she could still retrieve the life she had before… yet the woman who came back home was not the same frightened girl that had run away in the first place: she was a mother now, even if those men never knew about Harriet's existence. She was a fighter, but her fight was not in Arroya. Not anymore.

During the first days of March 1861, Amanda packed her bags once more and abandoned those men again – this time, for good. She went back to Houston: she had a daughter and a lover to find. Yet time had already been a determining factor, moving the pieces of her incomplete puzzle even farther away from her: Erron was still missing, and Harriet had already been adopted.

* * *

  **IV – Numbers**

_(The wandering years)_

* * *

In December 1860, Harriet Elisabeth Black was adopted by Mary and Paul Henderson, a middle-aged couple with no children. Farmers established in Laredo, the couple changed the girl's name to Margaret Henderson. Margaret got married, aged nineteen, to the oldest son of another farmer: Vincent Koch, aged twenty-three.

One year after their marriage, the twins Andrew and Joseph Koch were born on April, 7th, 1880. Yet only Andrew survived, little Joseph died during labor. Margaret Henderson died in 1932; she was seventy-two years old.

Andrew Koch worked his entire life on the farm he inherited from his parents. In 1915, aged thirty-five, he married Maria Alemonia, the younger daughter of a Spanish lawyer who had gotten very close to Andrew when creditors began to threaten him for the many debts regarding his farm. The marriage not only constituted a powerful bridge between the families, but it also served Andrew well in terms of quieting the rumors about his own sexuality; something he had tried to accomplish many times in the past, subjugated by an era that was constantly reminding him that he had no right to be the man he wanted to be.

Maria gave birth to Aurora Koch on June 21st, 1916. Andrew Koch committed suicide on September 20th, 1920, aged forty.

Aurora Koch and her mother, Maria Alemonia, sold the old farm and moved to San Antonio right after Andrew's death. Aurora became a nurse and in 1941 she married World War I veteran Julian Smith, her long-term boyfriend, who was nearly twenty years older than her. Aurora gave birth to two girls: Stella Smith, born on April 25th, 1943 and Martha Smith, born on February 16th, 1945.

Stella Smith and her mother died tragically in a car accident in 1958. Stella was only fifteen years of age.

Martha Smith worked as a teacher until she met Christopher Davies, a Welsh diplomat, during her first trip to Europe back in 1967; she was twenty-two years of age. They got married during that same year and in January 1968; Martha gave birth to the couple's only son: Julian Davies, named after Martha's recently deceased father.

The family moved to Camarillo, California, during the seventies. On November 23rd, 2021, Martha died in her sleep. She was seventy-six years old.

Julian Davies met Caroline May Roberts during their stay in the UCLA campus. The couple got married on March 1st, 1989; they were both only nineteen years of age back then, but Caroline was already expecting the couple's first son, Nathan Davies, born on July 26th, 1989.

On March 20th, 1991, the couple welcomed their second son, Peter Davies. Julian Davies and Caroline May Roberts got divorced eight years after Peter Davies was born.

* * *

  **V – Deuteronomy**

_(On God's acts)_

* * *

Defeated, Amanda went back to Arroya in 1905. Aged sixty-two, that old lady with grey hair and deep blue eyes quickly found out that her family had become an urban legend for the entire city: the girl had run away, leaving her husband to die alone. Her tyrannical father, crippled and disabled, had met his creator when the smoky gun of a mysterious mercenary had come to her aid – the secret lovers had run away together and they had lived happily ever after, but only inside the town's indefatigable imaginary.

No one recognized her now; the shadow of that pristine, nearly immaculate girl was receding from her eyes.

Like Penelope, still waiting for an eternal Odysseus to come back home, the woman sat down every day on a lonely bench in the town square – there she examined the faces, the many anonymous lives going on around her own paused existence. Inside that infinity of foreign eyes, she still tried to find him; she still tried to picture her lover inside her mind, what aging had done to his features, the very effects of time encompassing them both inside her fantasies.

She didn't know that time had already stopped for him – she didn't know that the punishment for his eternal joviality had only just begun. Little to nothing remained of that boy she had loved so dearly, it was much too late for the tragic lovers to be reunited.

Erron Black never knew about his daughter, the fruit of his forbidden love for Amanda Taggart – yet he mourned an unborn child all the same; the seed of his loneliness and his indifference when the greatest love of his life had indeed made him a father. Generation after generation his bloodline was still turning him into different versions of himself, completely unbeknownst to him: Erron Black had been a father, a grandfather, a great grandfather…

Amanda Black's heart stopped on January 21st, 1938, aged 95. She was still sitting on that solitary bench, waiting for a stranger to become  _him_. It would take thirty-seven more years for Black to visit Arroya, now Wickett, for the last time. He finally made it back home, only it was much too late.

Life had punished them both with longevity: her years had been filled with regret about everything she had done throughout her entire life – his decades had been polluted with the tragedy that encompasses the unknown; the man he had become, eternally detached from  _that other man_ : the one he should have been.

* * *

  **VI – Revelations**

_(The consummation of all things)_

* * *

[December 18th, 2014]

Christmas was approaching them but there wouldn't be time for trees, lights or even mistletoe that year. Moving houses is always meant to be such a stressful endeavor – some psychologists even claim that, in fact, moving houses can be as stressful for the mind as the loss of a close friend or a relative.

Her boyfriend was trying hard to help her with each box, each piece of furniture resting inside that yellow truck still parked outside. He had been the one who had gotten this apartment for her in the first place, so… he wanted her near, more than that, he  _needed_  her near. He was head over hills for her - he had even told her that they were the same age when, in fact, he was two years younger than she was. The woman almost died when she found out the truth but still, by the time she finally learned the truth about his age, she was already in love with him.

She forgave him. He looked older than he really was, anyway.

They had met in the public library, one cup of coffee suddenly turned into a dinner and the dinner, subsequently, turned into a romance. He was from Camarillo, she was from Maryland.

She had said it was time to leave her parent's house; she wanted freedom – she wanted to be independent. He listened. So he sought out every possibility, every lease, spoke to every landlord in the city – she never noticed, during the move, that many of his own personal things had been carefully hidden amongst her many boxes. A shirt, a toothbrush, a couple of his favorite books…

He was twenty-five, she was twenty-seven.

As days went by, his intentions became crystal clear but she didn't mind in the slightest: she wanted him near; she  _needed_  him near. It took them some time – several weeks piled up upon their shoulders in the process, but in the end, everything was in its rightful place, everything but one thing.

"Have you seen my box?" she asked, preoccupied. "I can't seem to find it."

Exactly like Nathan's oldest ancestor, she had kept a box of memories. Souvenirs from their time together – movie tickets, restaurant napkins, love letters… they searched for her box for moths but they never managed to find it so they concluded, bitterly, that the truck had taken it away or, perhaps, that they hadn't seen it inside the many boxes they discarded after the move was done.

Nathan put his arms around Alexandra and whispered: "We can always get another box."

The doctor shook her head: she didn't want any other box – she wanted _her_ box. Yet her boyfriend calmed her down then, as he tenderly began to massage her temples: he made her see that what they had could not be contained inside a box.

"There's no big enough box to keep our love imprisoned," Nathan said softly in her ear as the woman snaked her arms around his waist.


	33. Life in Bottomless Pits

Arc IV

Chapter XXXIII

**Life in Bottomless Pits**

* * *

 "Proposition one: time is a man, space is a woman."

 _Angela Carter_ —  _The passion of New Eve_

* * *

The old lady quickly understood the message sent by Black and embodied by that client tumbling down the stairs. She  _took out the trash_ , as expected, then made her way upstairs, as slowly as her ancient bones would allow her to; her rhythm and her pace demarcated by her own age. Rosario wanted to make sure everything was alright in her precious House of Pleasure: she had seen the girl and her grandfather leave the establishment but Black was still inside and, if her suspicions were correct, he had had everything to do with that unconscious man tumbling down the stairs only moments ago.

The manager cursed him under her breath: if only he knew they had other methods…

Determined to find the missing mercenary, the old Earthrealmer was already practicing inside her head the many different apologies she would have to offer to her clients for interrupting their private sessions. She would, of course, knock on every door but she knew that no matter how formal or polite her manners, they would still hate the unwanted intromission. It was inappropriate – she knew it for a fact; still remembering her own days as just another prostitute trying to make a living inside those very same bedrooms. Back then, when she was still young and attractive, according to Outworld's beauty standards. Back then, when she still was attractive enough to lure a man like Erron Black into visiting her bed. Now the tables had turned: she was no longer young, no longer attractive and no longer a prostitute – now she was the manager, and even if her grey, thin locks were showing that she wouldn't be in that position for much longer, her kind and modest ways had paid off and now she was undoubtedly respected and appreciated by  _her girls_.

The mercenary who had entered the brothel only hours ago was not that insecure man she remembered from her youth; the one trying to find an escape from a complicated situation back home. Many things had changed since those shared, heated afternoons of theirs: he had been graced by power and wealth but now he had lost it all. Rosario was no stranger to those rumors saying that he had abused his power and that he had gotten involved in some shady business – yet she didn't care in the slightest. She knew, with the certainty of everything that is definitive, that the man invoked by those rumors could not be the same dubitative man from her youth.

That man and this man were not the same person.

Not anymore.

She allowed her back to rest against the wall before resuming her search, her legs were clearly not amused by the unexpected journey upstairs they had been forced to endure yet, against all her speculations, finding Black didn't turn out to be so difficult after all. The timid stream of light emanating from the half-opened door and illuminating a specific portion in that old corridor made him an easy prey for her. Rosario entered the room without asking for permission, yet her timid steps only got slower as she got closer to the scene: a weeping Black was holding one of her girls in his arms.

Eyeing him rather suspiciously, Rosario touched the girl's forehead: she was unconscious, just like that pig Black had sent her way right after Ard'ahain and her grandfather had left the place. The quiet mercenary returned the cold stare yet he raised a calculative eyebrow to prove the woman that the girl's current state was not his fault. He hadn't attacked her, he was just trying to help.

"What happened in here?" Rosario whispered, still unable to take her eyes off the bruised woman he was holding in his arms so tenderly.

"I heard the screams," Black began, his voice was low and suddenly cold, as if his elocution could only retrieve the factual side of the story instead of the thousand hidden layers underneath the unexpected encounter. "The man was being rude to her; she was begging him to stop."

"And then?" Rosario kneeled, against her better judgment.

"Then the bastard pushed her, and her head hit the wall. I took care of him, as you already noticed."

She had noticed, indeed. But now her curious chestnut eyes were noticing something else entirely.

"Why are you crying, Black?" She asked as she rested her hands on his knees, looking for balance and a brand new sense of stability that could ease the growing pain starting in her hips. Given his history and his reputation, there was no way for that woman to believe his emotions had been compromised by the mere spectacle of gratuitous violence; that watching that woman getting attacked so brutally had somehow awoken his softer side.

"She's the daughter of an old friend of mine," he lied. "I thought I would never see her again," he added, then, trying to embellish his diction with sincerity as a way to compensate for the effects of his untruthful statement.

Rosario smirked bitterly then stood up and placed her hands at the sides of her minuscule waist: "What is her name?" The woman asked, testing him; the most pragmatic side of her had clearly decided not to buy his version of the story.

The mercenary remembered, instinctively, then closed his eyes and took a leap of faith: "Dakota."

The elderly lady rolled her eyes, amused yet intrigued. "Lucky bastard…" she spat through clenched teeth.

"Don't you have clients to entertain, Ros?" Black retorted rather disdainfully but his tone had been adorned with the petulance of an unexpected triumph. "Go. I got this."

Still muttering her bitter remarks, a defeated Rosario promptly left the room – not only she knew that trying to interfere in Black's business would get her nowhere, but she also had left a bunch of very demanding clients downstairs and her experience was advising her not to let her own business unattended. As soon as the old woman left the room, the mercenary laid the doctor on her back and stood up. Like that morning, over a decade ago, he took his time to examine the room where he was now: the big bed was placed in the center of the chamber, with just a little bedside table at its left. A few steps to his right he found the only window in the room and just a few more steps away from the window there was a gorgeous balcony offering an impeccable view of the building's inner courtyard. Behind his back, there was a mirrored wall: the opulence of such an expensive symbol of status was contrasting the otherwise austere-looking room but the cowboy understood that its presence was merely figurative; it was nothing but a recognition beacon placed there to remind everyone – the girl and her many clients – where they were: that room was not a house, that room was no sanctuary and it definitely was not a home; it was just a transactional shelter for business to take place.

A service would be offered and money would be exchanged in return.

The mirrored wall was hiding a rather small door behind overlapping walls, connecting the fantasy world of made-up Cinderellas to the rather simpler reality of those girls working their youths off in the brothel: behind the door there was a small bathroom and a petite, wooden wardrobe for them to save the few personal items or possessions some of them might still have.

As tempting as it was for the mercenary to explore the depths of that wardrobe, he refrained from doing so. He went back to the woman still resting on the bed and carried her to the bathroom. He filled the large, rectangular bathtub with tepid water and submerged her body in it – a part of him was finding it interesting to acknowledge the fact that Rosario had decided to invest in their girls' hygiene rather than to let them simply wash away the sweat and dirt using nothing but the little, impractical washbasins like they had done for so long, like Rosario herself had done for so long, poorly concealing the ministrations of one lover before moving on to the next one.

The many scars and bruises scattered all over her skin reminded him of that other woman he had met over a decade ago when the time for strange rooms and even stranger company had only just begun. The woman fidgeted under his touch, even with her eyes still closed, perhaps trying to indicate him to be more careful, to be gentler with that sponge he had found resting by the sink. Black got the message promptly, understanding that even if the unconscious woman was unable to communicate with him, her punished body was still able to somehow, speak to him. Now more delicately than before, the mercenary began to acknowledge what those years away from each other had decided to imprint all over her skin: beyond the recent crimes handwritten on her body by the irascible fists of her assailant, there were other crimes, older crimes.

The brand on her shoulder, the souvenir of her initiation, was the scorching welcome she had been forced to endure in order to become one of Rosario's girls. The shape; two concentric circles recreating a snake-like creature with two heads was talking about a ritual, a ritual that the doctor had accepted. Her legs were adorned by a colorful collection of bruises; brown, green and purple taking over the sad palette. Her back had been whipped – many whimsical patterns had been traced across her skin; juxtaposed lines recreating all sorts of geometrical forms. But even if those old sketches were far from the unparalleled terror of public punishments, they were still talking about customers that had found their twisted delight in her agonizing pain. Other singular bruises were covering her stomach, the kind of bruises that only enraged belt-buckles can imprint on someone else's skin.

The mark that hurt the most was the one in her left nipple.

Of course, there was no way for Black to tell if such a peculiar mark was new or if maybe she already had it back then, during their brief time together in the cabin. Yet something was telling him that it was new, that the unfortunate scarring on her nipple had been the result of her interactions with her clients. Rosario had told him while they were young; things like these he could never forget: some men can only find their pleasure in other's pain. The woman had even shown him back then, the permanent results of the torturous ministrations of those whose thirsts couldn't be easily quenched.

" _Not everyone is looking for release; not everyone is looking for pleasure. Some come thriving for dominance, and the only way to prove that they had succeeded is for them to leave their marks on you. Not red fingers painted across your cheeks, not blackened bruises that will fade in time – but something permanent; something that will always remind you that they have subjugated you, that their dominance over you will accompany you to your grave."_

Rosario's mark was placed in the nape of her neck – two small holes; caused by a mouth that had tried to steal a part of her, and it had succeeded, those small holes still claiming her whole today.

" _Why don't you just leave?"_ Black had asked back then.

" _It drags you down."_

It took him some time to fully embrace those concepts she had been trying to conceal under her intriguing answer: they couldn't leave because there was nowhere else they could go – most of them had ended up there because their loved ones had mercilessly handed them over to the final stages of a system that had already rejected them.

Just like Ard'ahain's so-called boyfriend had tried to do.

Just like Dexitis and his wife would have done to Zarrabayeusse hadn't it been for Black himself.

The House of Pleasure was a bottomless pit for all those women who didn’t belong anywhere else. The anesthetic nature of the deal would hide the atrocities they would be forced to do under a much-needed structure of never-ending protection. Learning that the limits of that protection were carefully demarcated by the doors to each one of their rooms was something they would never tell them, only allowing the girls to find out that inside the limits of each private world they were on their own.

They weren't paid for their services, not with money.

Their currency was translated into walls and clothes and food. Medical supplies, if necessary.

Rosario's shoulders, for them to cry on, were the last bastions of a laconic sense of familiarity still refusing to abandon them.

"It drags you down," Rosario repeated as she leaned her body on the doorframe. Her voice, embittered by the experience, had little to do with the reminiscences of a saddened youth – the same saddened youth that had whispered those words to that very same man, looking exactly as old as he did now, nearly a lifetime ago.

Oblivious to her presence, Black dared to brush his index finger along that broken nipple – the rosy bud had been torn in two; the gruesome groove running along the summit of her breast was inadvertently separating the surface, creating two small hemispheres in her now-fractured geography. In the communion of their pains, they were evened now by their branded shoulders and their lashed backs. Yet that broken nipple was affecting him way beyond the limits of his knowledge: the pain she must have endured, the unparalleled malice that had clashed upon her, corrupting her with such suffocating hunger. This new ire, this new rancor, this new vicious spite was as unclear as it was ancestrally cunning – who was he truly mad at? Himself, for having abandoned that woman? Or her, the transfixed image of a past that was no more – not even her own past was there for him to collect now – how could she, a woman like her, a professional, a doctor…  _how could she_?

How could she ever abandon herself in such a way? How was it that such a resourceful woman could not simply find another way?

"It drags you down," Rosario repeated once again, noticing his rigid jawline and his uneven respiration. The old woman handed him a clean towel but Black let it fall down to the ground – with the utmost care, he took the unconscious doctor in his arms again, as a curtain of water fell from her body, back to the tub. Rosario cursed through clenched teeth, her hips and knees aching, but she finally managed to pick up the discarded towel and enveloped Alexandra's body in it. As the gunman walked back to the bed, where he allowed her now-clean body to rest once more, Rosario followed them in silence. Black sat on the edge of the bed and tried to remove the towel but the older woman prevented him from doing so – even if she could easily understand that the look in those sad eyes of his had nothing to do with lust or sexual desire, still she preferred to take care of the doctor herself.

Rosario ordered Black to get her another towel and the mercenary obliged swiftly. Only then the manager of the House of Pleasure allowed the first towel to leave the scene, brushing the second towel on Alexandra's skin as delicately as possible.

"Who gave her up?" Black asked, his baritone voice cruising the room and shortening the distance between them.

"No one," Rosario replied softly as she discarded the towel. "She came here on her own."

The old woman stood up and walked to the doctor's wardrobe. She picked up a simple, green dress for her. Only then she asked for his help: as Black gently maneuvered the dormant body, Rosario dressed her up again. He rested her head on the pillow as the elderly woman covered her body with two white blankets. He had seen all of her scars, all of her wounds… even her number, tattooed on her right ankle; the same identification number Rosario herself had tattooed on her ankle.

Rosario had been girl number 672.

Alexandra was now girl number 834.

Yet, still underneath the torment of that life that had encountered her; underneath her hardened, punished exterior, the irrevocable sings of her aging had irreversibly started to show. That woman, still resting in a seemingly peaceful way, had little to do with the immaculate girl from his memories, the one he had been trying to find for so long. This new woman he had found was older than that girl; this new woman was possibly reaching her forties – but even now, when his whimsical sight was telling him that they finally looked about the same age, even so, she was still eternally younger than he was.

He had paused his life for an entire decade, becoming content with only dreaming about finding her – yet he never thought that in that unexpected, artificial equality of their physical maturities finally echoing and mirroring each other he would find the most tormenting of thoughts: even if they both looked about the same age now, only one of them was perennial. The eclipse was only meant to be short: the brief parenthesis in time, the subtle draw molding their looks now was nothing but an empty glory, it was the mother of all blasphemies - she was not his equal, not now, not ever.

His evergreen youth, forced to watch her wither and die, could not be reached by her decaying beauty.

There was really no way to reach him.

He had spent so much time trying to find her that he never actually stopped to think about the effects of all that time – how it was supposed to change her; the beginning of an end that was already in motion. Unlike his, her aging was not going to stop, her receding youth wouldn't be there for much longer, and the thought was as unsettling as it was heartbreaking.

He sank on the bed right next to her, completely oblivious to Rosario's presence, as the obvious truth found him: he had wasted her best years – that bright collection of joviality and youth, lost to the fires of his own conflicted emotions.

Even this reunion differed from the one he had imagined, night after night in that filthy cell he had called home for over a decade. He had created so many different versions of that moment inside his head yet none of them had ever encompassed such a crude reality like the one he had encountered.

This reality was far worse than his worst nightmares.

"It's really peculiar… the way you always seem to get yourself entangled in the way of power," Rosario's voice brought him back to reality but the only thing left for the cowboy to offer her was a confused expression. "Just like I once was somebody else's protégé, this woman is now  _my_ protégé. This place will be hers once I'm gone," she explained.

"Why her?" Was all he could ask.

"Like me, she was once  _somebody_. I want to give her the opportunity to become someone again. Someone respected; someone that actually matters." She searched the pockets of her dress until she found a pack of smokes and trapped a cigar between her chapped, thin lips but as soon as she lit it up, she started to cough. Black eyed her in silence, his intense eyebrows anticipating the words that were about to leave his mouth.

"You shouldn't smoke."

With a bitter half-smile adorning her old, Peruvian face, Rosario patted his shoulder lightly as she exhaled, the dense smoke instantly venturing the room.

"Thanks for the advice – though it pains me to know that perhaps if you had said those words about fifty years ago, it would have actually meant something."

The mercenary shrugged rather carelessly, realizing he had missed her bitter sense of humor.

"What this woman has done for this place…" the manager tried to go on but the lump in her throat prevented her mouth from freeing the words she wanted to say. Absorbed, the gunman stared at her in silence as her fingers began to trace the many creases adorning her mauve dress – the same ones mirrored in the skin covering her ancient face now. It took her a while to find the strength to go on; the cigarette became history as her own yesteryears got summoned by her raspy voice.

"She was ovulating that night, and she had already been through curettage. She didn't want to work that night; she had been very vocal about it – she didn't want to go through that ever again. But I didn't let her, I ordered her to go to work. I advised her to be careful, to take precautions if necessary, but I saw no reason for her not to work that night," she began, darkness engulfing her visage suddenly. "The man hurt her when she tried to stop him. I heard the screams and ran upstairs but I was too late: she ended up with her nipple torn in two; it only took him a lighter and a coin to brand her in such a way. Curettage, again... That was her second and last time. When she recovered, she implemented a system of rotating shifts to make sure none of the girls would have to work while ovulating. She didn't ask for my permission, but I knew it was necessary so I let her take control over the situation. The change was very simple, but it was very effective – unprecedentedly successful. Even today, every single one of the girls working here needs to inform her of every single alteration in their menstrual cycle."

"You know those schedules are not infallible," Black chimed in, his body still petrified by the story he had just heard. The words  _"it only took him a lighter and a coin"_  echoing inside his head: it had only taken him two coins to ruin her life.

Rosario nodded gracefully, turning around to see him.

"We know. But she gave them more than dates and instructions for them to avoid getting pregnant." The woman slid her hands to brush her fingers softly, traveling the length of Alexandra´s nearest forearm. "She made them understand that they have the right to choose – she gave them a consciousness, she made them realize that their bodies belong to them; not to me, not to their clients. Most of all, she made them  _pay attention_. She made them see that protecting their bodies is a full-time job; that the damage can be permanent, that having a healthy body or a damaged body is simply  _not the same_."

"In the end, you all won something from it," the mercenary whispered as he scratched his chin pensively.

"We all did," Rosario confided. "Dakota felt useful again, the girls protected their bodies. The business was safe: it was cheaper to let them rest five days a month than to pay for the procedure and wait until they were fully recovered." Warm tears filled her eyes as the old woman remembered: "Some of them never recovered at all… Before that night, she had already done a lot for this place but what she did for us, for  _all of us_  after that night, it was fundamental."

Black stood up and walked towards the door; he opened it and waited for Rosario to leave the room – it didn't take long for the woman to understand he needed time to process everything he had just heard.

"Guilt," he murmured as she walked past him. The woman froze in place, yet she didn't dare to look over her shoulder, she couldn't allow those coffee-colored eyes of his to destroy her once again with their imperturbable, defying indifference. "You're giving her this place because you feel guilty about what happened that night."

Rosario didn't answer. She lowered her head and went back to the bar downstairs.

* * *

He stayed in the room for a few more hours, noticing the subtle changes in her breathing – her chest rising and falling, her body shifting from time to time almost as if every pleasant dream was being chased by a terrorizing nightmare only to find relief in the following nice dream; the cycle stretching the very notion of time, even for a man like him.

Black looked out the window and noticed the sunset already washing the outskirts of the city in golden incandescence. The doctor had yet to open her eyes and he knew, he was certain: he could not bring himself to forsake her once again, he needed to be there when she opened her eyes. He needed her to see him there, waiting for her; he needed her to acknowledge him, to remember him.

He quickly went downstairs and searched for Rosario. The woman was busy behind the bar, counting bottles and revising the schedule for the night.

"I'll be staying the night," he informed her, but before he could turn around and leave, the manager reached out for him and forced him to stay.

"That'll cost you."

Black offered her a puzzled look as he cocked his head slightly, unable to believe she was actually willing to charge him for staying.

"You stay, you pay," she said, simply.

"I'm looking after her," He retorted, visibly offended by her lack of sensitivity.

"I know, my dear, but I don't do charity," Rosario added, shrugging her shoulders.

"I won't fuck her!" The mercenary yelled, his baritone voice cruising the place and causing all eyes around them to focus on him. "I won't even touch her," he barely whispered then, calmer this time, trying to talk some sense into that imperturbable woman staring right back at him. "It's not like she will be losing any clients, you know she still can't work like that." His voice was nothing but a weak sound caressing her ears.

"Some other girl could be using the room," she explained. "Business is business."

Black searched his pockets but before giving up his money, he tried one more time: "You can't be serious," he said, conciliatory.

But Rosario rolled her eyes and placed her forearms on the counter. She exhaled, loudly, as if trying to make it even clearer to him that she was upset.

"Pay up, Erron. It's the least you can do. Guess who is going to have to pay now for what you did to that man?"

"He was attacking her – I defended her; I stood up for her," his whispers followed hers; their fight was being quieted by the ever-constant possibility of being heard by the wrong audience.

"We have our own methods," she whispered back, rather energetically. "Subtler methods. When these things happen, we write their names in our books and when they come back – for they always come back – we inform them that our rates had been  _adjusted_. Suddenly they realize they can't even afford a whore anymore and they leave, feeling low and negligible, just like the pieces of shit that they are." Her fist colliding against the bar was reason enough for all eyes to look in their direction once again yet her candid smile, suffocating all possible threats and dangers, was reason enough for them all to accept there was no reason to worry. "Ours is a silent punishment but no, you just had to beat the shit out of him. What you did… there will be repercussions, and I will be the one dealing with them."

"The garrisons can protect you," Black said, only causing the old lady to laugh out loud.

"It's really hard to come up with a solution when you're part of the problem," she retorted as she patted his shoulder lightly, letting him now that the last thing the garrisons could do for her was to help her.

The mercenary looked down as he exhaled loudly, his hand finally producing the money that had been resting inside his pocket.

"This is all I have now," he said as he watched his salary getting lost behind the bar. He was ready to leave when Rosario tugged the edge of his jacket, forcing him to turn around once again.

"The daughter of an old friend is no different than your best friend's wife," she implored, her tone more amicable now. "Do not make the same mistakes again." In her eyes, the memory of her own youth: a younger Black, even if he already looked as old as he did now, had confided in her. He was having trouble back home, the affaire was about to contaminate the entire family. She had tried to persuade him back then; she had tried to talk him out of it. Yet his weaknesses had prevailed, and they had ultimately erased the sacred nature behind the term  _family_.

He looked down as those bitter memories finally reached him.

"I abandoned her once. I won't do that again."

Rosario grinned softly as she watched him in silence, his ancient body already going upstairs.

"Guilt," she whispered, causing Black's hands to create tight fists at the sides of his body. But far from violence, those fists were expressing all his bottled-up helplessness. The mercenary quickened his pace yet the meaning of her unspoken words reached him all the same. He went back to the room and glued his back to the door - there was no escaping his own demons now.

* * *

She was panting, sweat was covering her forehead and temples. It looked like a fervent fever, only he knew it wasn't that. It was yet another nightmare, enveloping her whole figure once again. He reached out for her, allowing his fingers to caress the soft skin of her cheeks – the woman turned and tossed, eyelids fluttered; the rich blue of those eyes of hers slowly swimming into focus.

No.

"Hey." Black welcomed her as he moved closer; making sure the doctor was alright.

No.

Her head was spinning yet her sight had already found an anchor in that ancient face of his – those coffee-colored eyes, she remembered. She remembered them all too well. That face, that hair… his appearance had changed but he still was the same old man who had forsaken her in the mountains, a lifetime ago.

No.

She curled her body against the pillow as she covered her face with her hands – he had found her. Legs pressed hard against her stomach and the feeling; the fabric, the soft caress of that fabric against her body… the last thing she remembered had little to do with the scene she was immersed in: she was naked and with another man.

No.

She looked under the covers only to find that she was wearing a dress. He had covered her. He had dressed her up. He had seen her naked – completely naked, he had seen her receding youth, the laconic symbols of violence scattered all over her. He had seen it all – the number tattooed on her ankle, her broken nipple, the merciless lashes on her back.

He had seen it all.

Panting harder, and with fistfuls of her own dress, the woman panicked under his endearing gaze. He extended his hands but did not dare to touch her – his voice, calm and simple, tried to reach for her.

"It's alright, you're alright," he said. She looked like a frightened animal, cornered and desolated. "A man attacked you, but he's gone now. I cleaned you up and dressed you. You hit your head against the wall but you're alright now," he whispered, peacefully, trying his best to sound reassuring for her.

He finally allowed one of his hands to tenderly touch her temples and tug her rebel black locks behind her ears. The doctor eyed him suspiciously, shivering under his touch as her silent tension finally traveled from one body to the other, causing his adventurous fingers to tremble as well. The mercenary moved even nearer yet she pushed him aside and jumped off the bed. Determined, she walked towards the door and opened it, then she turned around with eyes as cold as ice, and yelled: "Every time you save me you end up abandoning me, and every time you abandon me, my life gets a little bit more ruined, a little bit more  _fucked up_  than before," she began, her tight fists falling at the sides of her shivering body. Tears in her eyes, her voice ricocheted through the room: "You abandoned me in my own house, but I followed you. Then you abandoned me in that corridor, so I ended up living in your crystal case, waiting for the Rebel-Seekers to come after me. When they came after me, you abandoned me there too. So I won't be your lap dog anymore; this time I am abandoning you. Just go. Just leave me be."

Like a ray of light determined to extinguish the distance between them, Black sprinted towards the door and closed it abruptly, imprisoning her body against it. The stronghold of his arms contained her, for the very first time in what felt like an eternity. She fought the embrace for as long as she could but gave up eventually, her face getting lost in his broad chest. He turned around, his back now glued against the door, and let his legs fall down to the ground, carrying her in his arms.

"I'm sorry," he whispered wholeheartedly, his arms tightening the embrace.

"If you wanted to show me that my life without you could get a million times worse than my life with you… congratulations."

Her colorless voice showed no affection, it was lacking all possible, real emotion. Her very own personal paradox was holding her in his arms: she couldn't live with him, but she couldn't live without him either and even now, far beyond the limits of her every expectation, he was still the incarnated, bittersweet memory of a time that was long gone.

A time when going back home was still an illusion guiding her through the dark, driving her and fueling her every move. And even if it was true, even if he had shredded her hopes and dreams to pieces by abandoning her, she still had no choice but to admit that, as surprising as it was, she had missed him all the same.


	34. The Cowboy and the Whore

Arc IV

Chapter XXXIV

**The Cowboy and the Whore**

* * *

 " _Like the wild beasts, she lives without a future. She inhabits only the present tense, a fugue of the continuous, a world of sensual immediacy as without hope as it is without despair."_

Angela Carter ― The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

* * *

 He wanted to see what was left of her.

More importantly, how much of her – the original version of her he remembered from such a hazy past – could still be retrieved. And above all things; he wanted to discover if there was something about her that could still be retrieved at all.

But no matter how hard he tried, they still wouldn't let him. They were getting on his nerves, stating that she wasn't feeling alright, that she needed to rest, that the concussion was still making her feel weak and dazed. He knew better. He knew Rosario like the back of his hand and without a single trace of doubt left inside his mind the gunman was positive: Alex and the  manager had talked to each other after he had left the place; Rosario was closing all doors on him now, the unmistakable feeling of rejection brushing against his scorching skin.

It was as simple as it was obvious. It was as evident as it was painful.

The doctor did not want to see him.

It would always be a different girl the one they would send his way to repeat the same old message night after night:  _"She's unavailable now. She'll be back in a few days."_

A part of him knew that the concussion had been monumental – he understood it was going to take her some time to readjust her head after all the pain, the dizziness, and the struggle. It still was going to demand some time from her, her whole body reacting to brand new bruises, to a brand new face; his face. Familiar yet gone, he had been the first person for her blue eyes to swim into focus and see after the brutal attack.

Besides the gore and the violence, and way beyond the limits of this inclement life she had seemingly embraced, he himself was a repercussion still ricocheting inside her mind.

He came back every night after work for more than a week, but to no avail. His first attempts had been graced with the girls' kindness and impeccable sense of courtesy – thanks to Rosario, he guessed – but as days went by their responses became more and more mechanical and lifeless, as if they were disappointed at him for insisting so much, for not realizing the woman he was looking for was simply not interested.

The eighth night he saw himself insisting just like Nathaniel had insisted back then. The thought repulsed him as the bitter memory of that despicable man flooded his head with the virulence of an unwanted hurricane. Even if he knew, deep down, that their reasons differed, in their eyes – and even when they were completely unaware of the story – he was just another Nathaniel waving the distinctive flag of infatuation.

The ninth night was different. None of the girls came to stop him before he had even had the chance to walk through the door. The atmosphere had changed, he noticed as his cautious pace guided him through the crowded bar. A palpable sense of commotion, a tricky sense of awkward improvisation was enrapturing them all, making them forget all about him.

The mercenary took off his hat and sat on a stool by the bar; maybe it was finally time to try and talk some sense into Rosario, make her understand he just wanted to see the doctor. The patrons were crowded together all around him, their impertinent impatience demanding those drinks they had ordered a long while ago.

As Black looked over his shoulder with eyes full of disdain, indicating those men he was not amused by their unwanted proximity, he noticed three girls at the other side of the bar, struggling with countless bottles and glasses, trying their best and failing miserably.

"Rosario never keeps us waiting!" One of the patrons yelled.

Black rolled his eyes and tapped his fingers on the bar – the itching sensation dwelling in the palms of his calloused hands already speaking about an ancestral knowledge claiming to be unburied. Determined, he jumped over the bar and placed himself on the other side of the action. He indicated the girls to make some room for him to maneuver and, with the prestige of a true professional, the gunman opened the gates for the bartender to come out and play.

"You take their money, I'll keep the drinks comin'," he commanded as the girls nodded, surprised.

Familiarized with the routine, Black smiled softly to himself as he acknowledged that the memory of Good Old Jacob was still there, still pulsating inside of him.

The crowd dissipated rather quickly now that the bicentennial saloon boy was finding his delight in recreating a time that was long gone. The patrons quickly returned to their tables - he still was Erron Black after all, and many of them did not want to have him near. Yet a few men remained sitting by the bar, their drawn-out voices getting stained with the particular colors of liquor. They told him all sorts of stories as their mere, troubled presences allowed the mercenary to keep on pouring their drinks – some of them had problems back home, some others were unemployed or underpaid. Just when the gunman was starting to feel comfortable with their unexpected confessions, a gloved hand tapped him on his back, forcing him to turn around and look over his shoulder.

"What do you think you're doing?" The doctor asked, mildly surprised. Those black leather gloves were matching her long black dress.

"The girls were having a hard time here, so I decided to help them out," he retorted simply.

The woman crossed her arms over her chest as her scrutinizing blue eyes began deconstructing the shy image of those three twenty-something girls standing only a few feet away from them.

"It's all good; they should be able to take over now," Black said apologetically as he raised both hands in a defensive motion. "Where's Rosario?"

"They attacked her," one of the girls confessed, causing the doctor to narrow her eyes at her unwanted intromission.

"What happened?" Black asked, already guessing that the old, Peruvian woman had suffered the consequences of his irrational reaction.

"The usual," the doctor spat coldly as her eyes met his again, "everything you touch turns to shit."

Black lowered his head in silence, the sting of guilt quickly finding its way inside of him – yet visibly unmoved by his genuine sorrow, Alexandra cut him off before he even got a chance to say anything.

"Save it."

"The meeting is about to start," one of the girls informed the doctor yet her undivided attention was still glued to Black's pensive expression.

"You stay here and take care of the bar," Alexandra ordered the girls without even turning around to look at them. "You – upstairs, with me." She grabbed the man by one of his forearms and dragged him out of the bar and up the stairs. The familiar corridor welcomed their quickened pace and their uncomfortable silences. Opening the door to the room where he had found her only days ago, the doctor signaled him to join her. She closed the door behind him and motioned towards the balcony waiting for Black to follow her. He obliged, and they sat by the petite table there – their eyes traveling beyond the limits of the balcony only to find the inner courtyard below them engulfed in the quietest of silences now that every single one of the girls was working, whether they were on the bar or selling their bodies in the rest of the rooms.

"The cowboy and the whore… it has a nice ring to it; there’s a certain western vibe to it," Black reflected absentmindedly, his eyes wandering her indifferent expression.

It took her a moment for her words to venture her lips.

"I thought you were still in jail," she confessed, her eyes still unfocused, swimming in the confines of an untouchable distance.

"I see you heard about me," he reflected. "I thought you were…"

"Dead? Gone?" She cut him off.

Her tenacity caused his lips to curl up slightly as he ventured one of his hands to kill the distance between them, cupping her nearest hand with his own.

"Alex…"

"Erron," the woman said as her eyes swam into focus only to offer him the coldest of stares. Even if it was the first time his name was being adorned by her voice, it was light years away from the enchanting sound he was expecting to hear. "See? I too know your name," she sentenced before removing his hand. Feeling disregarded inside the very limits of his own identity, the cowboy sighed helplessly.

"You never mentioned you were married. Did you kill her?" Alexandra asked him coldly.

"I was in prison," he said, angered by her train of thought. "How can you even ask me that?"

"Can you really blame me?"

Speechless, the mercenary understood that the damage he had caused her had been greater than what he had thought. That woman he had longed to find for so long had nothing to do with this other version of her; a colder version he had helped manufacture with his impertinence and his chauvinist ways. Surely her time in the brothel had worsened the situation yet he could see, clearly and vivid before his eyes, the original seed of his sins contaminating her.

"This is the prologue of the rest of your life," he said. The doctor directed her attention back at him, yet she still couldn't quite understand the true tenor of his words. "You're in charge until she recovers, right?"

Alexandra nodded in silence.

"She's trustworthy," he said. "Rosario…" Her cold stare was making him see that, at least, they agreed on something. "But still you chose to hide your true identity from her; I noticed she calls you Dakota. Do you know your invisibility is on borrowed time, right?" His tone was distant and calculative yet there was a certain color to his diction, a genuine confessional trance enveloping him entirely: "Rosario wants you to be the new manager of this place once she's gone. That position implies power and danger – that position is just too far from the shelter of anonymity."

"That's just hearsay," the doctor offered, trying her best to persuade him. "I know most girls are jealous of me, Rosario and I are close friends." Her voice was more amicable now, for the first time.

"It's not hearsay. Rosario told me."

Her expression changed abruptly, making it crystal clear for him that the attention of being placed in the honeyed zeniths of power was the last thing she wanted.

"I grew up in a saloon – I can help you out until she recovers. We can plan something together; I can help you avoid all that undesired exposure," he suggested.

Her hands were suddenly tight fists weighing heavily against the waves of her black dress – her black hair in the wind, cascading down her shoulders and the lump in her throat; forcing her to remain silent. She stood up and let her fists rest on the railing, her blue eyes lost in the courtyard below them.

"You left,” she remembered. “You left and you left  _me_  there - to burn, to melt without you. I imagined this moment a thousand times; ever since that night… I guess I have always entertained the idea of finding you again. I longed for you that night, and you still left me there."

He remembered those lips of hers and the leather separating them from his own lips; such fragility, such vulnerability. He had known, back then, it had had nothing to do with love yet that image had accompanied him during his nights in his cell nonetheless – as she longed for him every night, in the theater of his convoluted memory, painting his dark world a shade lighter each time.

"I had a life before you," she went on; still not ready to face him. "I'm not talking about my life back in Earthrealm but my life here, before you. Good or bad, it existed."

The mercenary stood up and enveloped her with his arms yet the sudden warmth he had to offer was not enough for her eyes to meet his.

"I have thought, many times, if it was possible for us to pick up things where we had left them,” she said. “To kill the distance and the time and just pretend that I was still standing on that burning mountain; and that you were coming back to rescue me. I see now that it may not be possible for us to do so. And all I ask of you is to understand the same thing: I'm not standing on that mountain anymore – and you just can't come and rescue me." She turned around, finally, still trapped inside his embrace yet miles away from the soothing, balsamic feeling of actually belonging there. "I understand now that it was naïve of me to ask for your help – I appreciate everything you did for me; you helped me escape from prison, you provided me with a roof above my head… you fed me, you held me when I cried. But please don't be confused by any of this," her tone, even if just above the scales of a dying whisper, turned an octave darker as she brushed her hands over the stronghold of his arms. "I did not miss you."

Even when the fortress of his arms had ceased to provide her with the necessary fierce to keep her smaller figure gravitating near his broad chest, the woman still chose to remain there, mildly sustained in place by her own free will.

"The night you found me here, I only accepted your arms around me because I was confused; the situation had overwhelmed me. That night you were met by a weaker, more fragile version of me. Even so, I'll admit such gestures;  _dear_ …" she grabbed his wrists strongly, forcing him to tighten up the embrace once again. "It's easy to be held by you – your arms are still weird, haunted houses. Yours was the first embrace that was not polluted by sexual desire since I came here, it was a drop of water in the desert that's this place." Leaving his arms, her hands landed on his chest. "It's not because your body language distills love, Erron. Far from it – I still remember your every misplaced desire. There's something cunning about feeling protected, even if that protection comes from the very man who has abandoned you." She separated their bodies by pressing her index fingers against his torso; his arms already struggling to outrun the growing distance, her voice now a mere murmur brushing against his ears. "I won't thank you for saving me that night – what you did that day… so selfish and reckless, they retaliated because of you, and now Rosario is the one paying for your actions."

Her fingers abandoned his chest only to find his wrists once again – she directed them back to the sides of his own body, the stronghold of her tight fists keeping his arms there, gravitating in the impervious empty space surrounding his own body. She leaned in closer and whispered in his mouth: "I won't thank you for corrupting the limits of my privacy once again; for seeing me naked, for bathing me and dressing me up while I was unconscious. Such transgressions,  _dear_ , can only come from a man who still doesn't give a shit about me."

He shook himself free from her. This time, he was the one building walls and barriers to keep her away from him.

"I did all those things because I  _still_ care," he whispered back as he walked away, already headed for the door, feeling overwhelmed by the rollercoaster ride of emotions she had just forced upon him. The tables had irrevocably turned, he acknowledged. Now she was the one romancing power; now she was the one subjugating his heart and his mind in a phantasmagorical Ferris wheel of desire and repulsion.

As she sat back down, her voice traveled the room, coaxing him to stay:

"They are regrouping. The Rebel-Seekers."

He walked back to the balcony but instead of joining her, he simply leaned his body against the railing and crossed his arms over his chest.

"I heard things in El Club de los Amantes; some of the girls had heard things as well – you know, they confess things from time to time," she explained vaguely.

"A good man always trusts his whore…" Black reflected bitterly as he remembered himself back in the day, confessing his dark secrets to Rosario.

"These are not good men," Alexandra corrected him.

"Neither am I."

El Club de los Amantes was a very selective consortium inside the House of Pleasure. Only those wealthy enough or powerful enough were welcomed to join – their weekly meetings would cover topics placed far beyond the limits of the simplistic nuisances of the brothel and its interests: trafficking of weapons, goods and liquor; political uprisings and all sorts of shady business would fly from one mouth to the other as Rosario's imperturbable gaze would moderate the debates and discussions.

"Now that you're out, they want to finish what they started," she said. "They want you to pay for what you did to their organization by exposing it."

Only then Black joined her, as he sat back down next to her.

"If the emperor is not funding them anymore, who is?" He asked yet the woman simply shrugged, unable to provide him with an answer. "They can't know about you," he let out, visibly worried. "This meeting the girl mentioned before – is one of their meetings, right?" Alexandra nodded in silence. "Let me go with you."

The woman cocked her head and offered him a look of complete bewilderment: "I just told you they want to end you and you want to join them?" She was right. If he wanted to break them again, for good this time; if he wanted to avenge his wife, he would have to be smarter than that.

"You could use some extra cash; a part-time job, maybe? Especially now that you wasted your miserable salary by staying the night here with me," she began, a half-smile adorning her seemingly amused expression. "Rosario told me you gave up your entire salary for a night with me. Had I known that beforehand I wouldn't have kicked you out of the room when I woke up that morning,  _dear_ , I would have been so much  _nicer_." She cupped his hand with her own, romancing him.

"I'm not one of your clients."

"A good mercenary could always use some extra money," she went on, oblivious to his previous statement. Her age was trying to fool him but he still was able to see things as they truly were: now she was his equal, time and despondency had broken down that girl, summoning the woman in her. "Come by every night after we close. You say you grew up in a saloon? Perfect - help me with the numbers; I assume you know how to administer a place like this."

She did not want to make amends, she merely wanted to negotiate.

"Both of us are looking for the same thing: we want to terminate the Rebel-Seekers, or what's left of them before they even get the chance to rise again. For Aalem, for me – even for you."

"For my wife," he added, downhearted.

"Every night, come by and help me with the numbers – I'll pay you a small amount for your services, say,  _two silver coins_ , and give you their names in return." In her mind, there was no room for his words to bloom; if he was grieving, she didn't want to know.

He remained silent for a moment, absorbing the true implications of her proposal. The tables had turned, indeed. Not only she was the one wielding power and playing all sorts of games with his mind – now she was about to become his boss; providing him with names like mere crumbs trying to feed a starving pigeon. She was about to keep him in her invisible cabin in the mountains, entertaining him with false mirages just for her amusement, just because she could, just for the thrill of watching him waste away under her gaze.

Crestfallen, but understanding that if he truly wanted to be near her, if he truly wanted to help her and help the memory of Zar he had no other choice but to accept her terms, Black finally nodded, accepting the deal.

As she stood up, ready to leave the room, she said: "Meeting's about to start. You stay here, I'll come back for you once it's over – once it's safe for you to go."

 _Safe for him to go…_  he was Erron Black; he was capable enough of unleashing hell upon them all yet he understood their plan was bigger than that. He had to be patient, he had to be wiser. Chewing on his growing frustration, the gunman stood up and grabbed her by her waist, forcing her rich blue eyes to meet his.

"You could have done something else instead," he barked, his thoughts tangled in what Rosario had told him – no one had given her up, she had  _chosen_  that life.

"Excuse me?"

"Selling your body is easy – I'm disappointed at you. You chose the easy way out." He prepared his cheek to feel the distinctive sting of her palm slapping him hard across the face yet the woman only laughed, and caressed his shoulders gently.

"I imagine being a gun for hire is an extremely complicated thing to do, then. Isn't it?" She whispered as she resumed her pace, headed for the door.

"The  _bounty hunter_  and the whore," her tantalizing voice reached for him before her figure disappeared behind the door, "it has a nice ring to it; there’s a certain  _western_  vibe to it."

He had wanted to see what was left of her.

More importantly, he had seen now how much of her – the original version of her he remembered from such a hazy past – could still be retrieved,  _if_  there was something about her that could still be retrieved at all. The man shook his head pensively as she left the room. His hopes demolished, almost nothing was there to remind him of the woman who had positively unburied his beloved ones. As he brushed his calloused fingers against his skull, the sudden realization hit him: little was there to anchor the man he had been before jail to the one he was now, emerged from his most private confines and replenished by the dark specters of vengeance and retribution.

They were not the same ones who had said goodbye by the mountainside. Yet still, neither she nor he could find the strength to say goodbye again, even if their awkward reunion had been polluted by power and leverage, like some sort of romance mixed with an unwanted air of professionalism.

Neither she nor he could manage to say goodbye again,  _not now_. Not now that their looks had finally been leveled, not now that her scars were finally matching his scars, not now that her body had endured countless lifetimes just like his.

Not now that a brand new, different sense of chaos had finally merged their differences into just one homogenous tabula rasa so eager to be illustrated, so incomparably thirsty, so inherently hungry.

_Not now._

He had wanted to see what was left of her.

Adaptation became again a mechanism for survival.


	35. How Strange the Sound…

Arc IV

Chapter XXXV

**How Strange the Sound…**

* * *

 " _Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within."_

Sigmund Freud

* * *

[8 days later.]

 _Eight bottles, nine bottles, a dozen bottles –_ _No bottles._ _Just numbers._ _How strange the sound…_

"Girls… I'm a very old man," the gunslinger mumbled as he tried hard not to lose sight of the tiny numbers displayed right in front of his eyes. Those girls weren't interested in the economy of the brothel; their quiet laughter had nothing to do with the coldness and the distance of any possible mathematical equation. "Seriously, ladies… I'm a very,  _very_  old man," Black added nonchalantly, his fingers cruising mid-air as if attempting to shoo them away. But youth is avid, and hungry, and oh so relentless.

The bar, now silent and nearly deserted, was the muted witness for the carnival of souls to exhibit all of its different hues as they collided against the darkest of nights. He knew one of the girls that were flirting with him, El-A, the one who had let him know that Rosario had been attacked, the one who trembled before the doctor's contained ire, like a leaf trying to survive a devastating hurricane. The other two girls he had seen them before yet he didn't even know their names – he just remembered them from watching them go up and down the stairs every night, always escorting a different client, always offering a new sort of amusement, a new smile, a new deviation of the lives they should have lived.

 _The brunette and the honey-eyed one_ ; he had categorized them, simplifying their physiques and mutilating most aspects of their personalities.

"I won't say it again, ladies; I'm just way too old for you…" Black smirked, his masculinity satisfied to know those three girls were persistent in their countless attempts of seducing him, revolving all around him like moths to a flame. El-A sat on his lap, causing the ancient gunman to rest his pencil on the table and offer her a broad smile.

"You don't look that old," the honey-eyed one whispered in his ear, taking advantage of his apparent moment of weakness.

Black placed his chapped lips on the brunette's neck; his warm and humid words drawing shapes and figures all over her skin, his coffee-colored eyes still fixed on El-A: "I'm old enough to know I don't need to pay for those things I can get for free," he sentenced, nonchalantly, "not anymore." He raised an eyebrow, his left hand now resting carelessly on the girl's waist.

 _Of all your dresses,_ _of all your skins –I prefer the simplest ones,_ _the most sacred ones. You always look so lovely, my dear ones_ , _but I…_ _it seems_   _I am always wearing death._

Pushing the numbers aside for a moment, the man tried to concentrate on the delicate ministrations those three young women were crafting for him. In a way, he concluded bitterly, it was as if those girls didn't quite know how to act around a man if he wasn't trying to purchase what they had to offer. Drenched in their so-called affection, Black glanced over the stairs to notice the darkness pooling around every corner: she, the one he had been trying to reach, had been avoiding him again. The task, so resolute and condescending, melted in the notion of those six hands roaming through his body as those digits brushed his clothes. And still he knew – none of those fingers belonged to  _her_.

"We don't do charity," the honey-eyed one whispered, her tongue flicking out of her mouth to caress the corners of his lips.

_Well done, Rosario. Well done._

In an environment composed by women only, men were cruelly demoted to a lower league: they were just clients, customers pretending to obey the rules of a false publicity: the need to satiate a nonexistent hunger; the desperation to feel something, anything at all. Black had already felt those young, intrepid eyes deconstructing his being as an attempt to apprehend his one true shape: the night when he had decided to jump over the bar and help them. They had watched him with such innocent devotion back then, as if he was some sort of mystified master supposed to teach them something extraordinarily important. The look of expectation they had offered him back then, as if he was some kind of a prophetic phenomenon they couldn't quite comprehend.

The many numbers he had written on those pages tried to summon him back and the man studied the ciphers displayed before him with an unusual thirst: maybe he could teach them something, after all – teach them how to administer the place, how to calculate incomes and outcomes, how to run an inventory. El-A killed the distance and tasted his numb lips, pushing his every thought aside – how weak the flesh and how tormenting the feeling.

"Easy now, girls. The man is not our customer. He's our employee," Alexandra's disembodied voice romanced the last 'e' through parted lips. Such a crude remark and such a melodious sound, almost as if she was singing - the enchanting sounds intonated by each color of her voice, the mischievous song of a mermaid that knows her drowning sailor like the back of her own hand.

He looked up, trying to find her, yet his dilated pupils found nothing but darkness and the hollowed, empty space she should have occupied.

 _How strange the sound,_ _the echoes of my own voice -_ _and how startling the mirrors,_ _how unsettling the faces,_ _and how sad their artificial love,_ _their artificial voices,_ _their hauntingly real hunger. The mirror – speaks and he can't help but feel sorry for them, knowing it all too well, his eyes seeing those bodies in just one unique dimension, those skins adorned by just one single light._

He shook his head, tormented by the notion: he couldn’t see past the whores. His mind, turbulent and shadowed, still longed to find her there; the invisible hands of her colorful voice dragging him down and making him dance the sweetened waltz of everything that's not exactly the way it should be.

_Yet his song is completely still; he's bound to dance the dance of those who don't move anymore. He knows the mirror. The mirror speaks and the thought shakes him from within: the mirror speaks, and it tells quite the eloquent stories, and the way he thinks about those girls is the exact same way they all think about him - they can't see past the monster. I am always wearing death._

He looked up again.

 _Taps his fingers on the table / the brunette / his fingers / her fingers / his jawline / he looks up again / six hands / she's not there / the simple mercenary / the whore and the mercenary / the mercenary and those girls / his fingers on the table / she's not there / the honey-eyed one / the kiss / his fingers tapping on the table / she's not there / taps on the table / the kiss / the numbers / he can only see those girls as moons with only one face left to show: the easy one, what everybody_   _sees_.

Unidimensional. They have become unidimensional entities in a world full of overlapping faces.

_I am always wearing death._

But the numbers don't lie; they never lie. 

 _Eight bottles, nine bottles, a dozen bottles…_   _The discrepancy is as peculiar as it is bewildering. The brunette, the honey-eyed one. His lips, nipped by their lip; hands, she's not there, six hands, a dozen bottles, the discrepancy, the kiss, the laughter. The distraction._

"Girls," her stern voice proved she was not bluffing. "Silence."

The mercenary raised his eyebrows, the notion too clear to be ignored now that the doctor's phantasmagorical apparition had provided him with a small glimpse of sanity: those unidimensional beings were not interested in romancing him; they were merely distracting him from the most obvious of truths: the numbers never lie but they can – and they will – expose those who try to bend them.

He got up and tipped his hat to those girls observing his departure with such saddened eyes, and like a mesmerized sailor trying to reach for the source of his enchantment, Black went upstairs and stepped inside Alexandra's room.

He had seen little of her during those eight nights he had spent working at the brothel. Their interactions had been limited to an indispensable minimum - not only the doctor wasn't interested in spending any time with him but also he had started to suspect that her uneasiness around him was not just a frightening tale he had made up inside his own twisted imagination: he himself was still having a hard time trying to decipher how to act around her, maybe it wasn't so crazy to believe that she was having the same problem. Her ambivalent moods had put him to the test, revealing contradictory shades that had little to do with the nearly uptight consistency she had shown over a decade ago.

"El-A, towel," her voice greeted him from the bathroom.

"I'm not El-A," the gunslinger replied shyly, his tranquil pace coming to a halt; his fingers faltering, allowing the papers he was carrying to land on her bed.

There was a brief moment of silence yet her determined words caressed his ears with renewed determination.

"Erron, towel."

_The mirror still speaks._

"Sorry about the girls, they can be very annoying – they are just so young and careless..." Alexandra said, apologetically, yet the tone of her voice had already distanced the woman from the ones she was talking about. Black rested his hat on her bed, right on top of his papers, and walked to the bathroom where she was waiting for him. Picking up the towel she had placed around the doorknob, he stopped and sat down on the floor, his back resting against the bathroom door.

"I'm not going to walk all the way over there."

 _How strange the sound_ _of my own words_ _leaving your mouth._

She smiled, and the gesture seemed tender; sweetened by a memory that maybe lacked luster in the back of her mind but still pulsated and resonated inside her nonetheless, fixated inside the souvenirs she still possessed of the time they had spent together, before the fire, before the distance, and before themselves. The man smiled in return, and his gesture seemed pure as well, as if he was trying to summon the one she had been before - before the fire, before the distance, and before themselves.

Stretching his left arm, Black handed her the towel.

"It's alright; I know where to draw the line," his words caused the doctor to offer him an unexpected, quiet grin. She covered her naked body with the white towel he had offered and kneeled down before the man – with her thumbs, she traced the outline of his lips: the red lipstick of those girls painting her fingertip in the crimson shades of desire.

"If you say so…"

She stared at her own colored finger then looked up again only to find his gaze still fixed on her and she smiled, broadly now, the genuine nature of her gesture was contagious, causing his own lips to grin as well as an attempt for him to mirror the light in her eyes.

She stood up, but the towel refused to accompany her and so it pooled around her bare ankles – so many marks on that body could never redefine such beauty. Her shadow towered over him, like a monumental obelisk meant to emulate the glimmering lights of those better days that were never coming back. He could only stare – and it was rude, and it was impolite, but he couldn't help it. She walked past him and his determination ceased to exist: now his neck was struggling, trying to catch a glimpse of her figure as she moved near the bed, as she examined the nervous numbers he had projected on those papers, as she lit up a cigar and exhaled a turbulent cloud of smoke that traveled, resolute, towards the open window; as she chose, oh so deliberatively, the indigo nightgown determined to cover her silhouette – the material seemed just so delicate and fragile it gave an incomplete idea of nakedness; a raw illusion shaped inside her real shape. His neck struggled and she knew, she saw, she smiled – just like he knew, he saw, he smiled: they didn't know how to act around each other anymore.

The doctor sat on her bed and beckoned him to join her. Crossing her legs, she acknowledged the eyes of a small child seeking permission in the shape of that relic of a man. He sat beside her, his hands resting on his pressed thighs. Adolescence, it seemed, was the best term – if not the only term – left to describe the mutated nature of their still-evolving bond.

"I've found several discrepancies between the numbers you gave me and my own calculations."

 _Look at me now,_ _breaking the ice_ _with nothing but the shards of an antique attraction_ _I still can't seem to control._ _Don't be fooled by the expendable idiosyncrasy of my numbers,_ _I know that you know better_ _than to trust_ _my own mathematical existence._

He tried his best to go on but the material, so delicate and gentle, looked so fragile against her skin. He couldn't help to look and so he noticed each mark, each scar; even the subtle movement of her chest every time she breathed in and out. The tender, harmonious rhythm of her warm respiration and the landscape of her punished being still looked so diaphanous to him.

This time, her eyes acknowledged his undivided attention.

This time, he did not blush.

Alexandra crossed and uncrossed her legs, her back arched and her shoulders, firm and unrelenting, set the pace for the elegance of that body of hers to declare war on the ancestral ties behind the concept of shame. She knew, he was sure, she must have known the thin material covering her body now was not enough to prevent those phenomenal shapes of hers from reaching the outside; the curtain too weak, too indelible to cover her.

  _Shame is not a concept made to endure the test of time_.

His eyes, too eager, too hungry.

And she knew, she noticed.

But she didn't care.

"Someone might be stealing bottles from the larder," Black let out, finally making an ulterior effort to concentrate. But there was something about her face that gave her away; her eyes had completely exposed her intentions: maybe it was the serene elocution adorning his voice, maybe it was that calm demeanor while he spoke, maybe it was the fact that he had chosen to speak during such a delicate, silent exchange.

"I'll talk to the girls, first thing in the morning," the doctor let out softly, her dead lips unable to contain the barricading frustration. "Should we find out that one of them has been stealing wine from under our noses, I will speak to them privately to make sure they're not in trouble," she added calmly. "As I said, they are just so young and careless…"

They were still sitting down on her bed, side by side, like two teenagers staring at their own hands. Her legs hovered before her; the minuscule movements of her knees made her feet dance and gravitate, unable to touch the ground. He stayed still, long legs stiff and reticent, ancient feet touching the ground. She got up and walked back to the bathroom where she picked up the towel still discarded on the floor. With care yet seemingly unpreoccupied, the woman killed every single one of the drops of water still cascading down her black hair. The mercenary watched in silence as her mane danced and swirled and waltzed to the tunes of such simplistic rituals. Again, the towel came to rest on the floor, now heavier than before, more definitive than before, and she walked back to her own bed where she sat back down again, right next to the muted gunslinger.

 _He stares._ _His gaze is long, explorative._ _He needs to know._

"I know you had to protect your identity, but I don't think I'm  _ever_  going to get used to this new hair color of yours."

 _She stares._ _Her gaze is long, explorative._ _She needs to know._

"You should let your hair grow back," she said. "There's no point in looking like a prisoner when you're a free man and everybody knows it. Do you want to show them you survived your stay in prison? Is that what this new look of yours is all about? Another highlight for your resume?"

 _His gaze is long, explorative._ _He needs to know._

"But I  _did_  survive my stay in prison, I have a right to let it show. And speaking about hair…" The question burned in the back of his throat. "Why  _black_?"

 _How strange the sound of my own name_ _crucified amongst your piece;, like particles of my own existence_ _melting into you, as if I was a part of you / part of me / part of us (us) / us / (a)part of us, from me, in you / as if I was a part of you / (you) (a)part of me._

"They dyed my hair black when I first started working here," she commented; the explanation too simplistic to cover the full length of what had actually happened. "It had nothing to do with preserving my identity, actually. It was  _pure marketing_."

_Well done, Rosario. Well done._

The mischievous light in her eyes ignited like a mad kite about to explode in the sky.

"When I first arrived here, the color of my hair was not important. But when I became one of Rosario's girls, she suggested a change - rumor has it that there was once a man,  _someone very close to power_ , that hated red-haired women. Nobody knew the reasons why, no one could understand the roots of his aversion towards red-haired women, but they all came to accept his preferences. The man was… well, he had a  _reputation_ so everybody knew it: crossing him was not an option. But there came a day when the man stopped coming over – he had found someone; he had gotten married. But still, every now and then he would still solicit the company of our women. The manager would go meet him and he would choose his occasional ladies… until one day, the woman he solicited was unable to make it. Desperate, the manager decided to send her last girl on her way to the palace -  _did I mention he lived in the palace?”_ she paused _._  “The manager prayed for his benevolence, she prayed he would understand she had no-one else but that one girl, the red-haired girl… That was the last time he ever asked for one of our girls but that's not all - his repulsion was so big, his aversion so unbearable, this man began spreading quite the fascinating rumor:  _red-haired women bring the worst luck of all_. You know people in this realm are very superstitious… A rumor like that spread like a wildfire out of control so, during my initiation, I had to change my hair color because of someone else's unfounded speculations. Good thing is that they at least let me choose the color and, what can I say? I've always had a thing for subtle homages."

Black lowered his head in silent contemplation: "So, it seems I'm guilty of that too…" his voice, manifesting no signs of rancor or disdain, gravitated closer to a heartfelt deduction.

 _There are many questions_ _waiting to be freed_ _yet his only interrogation_ _is silence._ _How strange the sound…_

Alexandra rolled her eyes in silent admittance – even if she had never stopped to actually consider it, too caught up in the comicality of such a capricious anecdote, deep down she knew Black was right. The sounds of jovial laughter startled them. The giggling girls shattered the moment as the tourbillion of steps got closer to Alexandra's door. The three girls stepped inside the room without even knocking, causing the doctor's lips to become a thin, lifeless line.

"We're done for the night," El-A informed. The brunette and the honey-eyed one stayed by the doorframe, their mouths agape and their eyes illuminated by a renewed sense of mischief. They blew kisses his way before the uncontainable laughter engulfed their faces and the doctor sighed, discontented by their lack of tact – she could understand the treacherous mazes of youth, yet she couldn't bring herself to believe they could have such unparalleled moments of complete immaturity. Far from feeling intimidated by Alexandra's cold stare, the leader of the petite group took another step forward: "We're about to visit Rosario, do you want to come with us?"

The doctor shook her head in silence: "It's late, girls. Rosario must be sleeping by now – don't wake her up, let her rest."

El-A nodded and left the room and the other two girls followed her immediately. The mercenary's tired sight, still trapped somewhere in between the door and the exact spot where El-A had been standing only seconds ago, found an anchor in the doctor's face as she stood up and closed the door.

He stood up as well, looking resolute: "I should go as well. As you said, it's getting late." His left hand rested on the doorknob, his right hand tipped his hat. "By the way, how's Rosario?"

"She's recovering," the doctor said, "but this sort of heat does not help her condition. She's too old – her bones are too old. It's going to demand a great effort for her to get better but I'm positive she'll be walking again soon."

He offered her a half-smile before venturing his body in the completely dark corridor. Alexandra remained still in her room until the sounds coming from the empty bar confirmed her suspicions: the black geography had indeed many obstacles for the gunslinger to succeed. She grabbed a small torch and followed after him, making her way downstairs in complete silence – the auburn luminescence of the flickering flame preceded her, its warm aura embellishing the place with every step she took.

She found him standing only inches away from the bar – the door was locked, so she walked around him and searched for the old key. Balancing its weight on the palm of her hand, the woman signaled him to hold the torch for her and Black obliged, as his sepia-colored sight watched her body disappear behind the bar. After a short while she emerged from the darkness – the woman produced two golden coins and handed them to the man. He took them quietly, his ancient visage offering her an unfeeling look – he knew better than to trust each one of her moments individually; the conglomerate of instants breathing life into her existence was so much more complex than the monochrome flashes of her fragmented life. This woman he had encountered today had been warmer than expected, but the one he was going to find the next day could be colder, or perhaps more distant. Black curled his palm and grinned in her direction, trying to savor the last seconds of such a night.

"There is a name," she whispered. "Ala-m Eré – he's a nobody, but he's involved: he recruits teenagers, they say he's nothing but a jabberwocky, but he always gets the job done anyways."

Black nodded pensively, acknowledging his first potential target.

"It's still going to take me a while for them to trust me. Now that Rosario's been hurt, I can see they are being extra cautious – they are not really fond of newcomers,” she reflected darkly.

"Patience," he whispered as they both walked to the door. "We'll get them, in due time."

She unlocked the door for the man to leave the brothel.

"Thank you for letting me know about the missing bottles," she said, causing his legs to freeze in the doorway.

"No problem. That's what you hired me for, after all… That's what  _friends_  are for in the end."

_How strange the sound…_

Her face was shaken yet her expression had hardened now, as if his words had positively offended her.

"You are not my friend."

"I'm not your enemy either."

_How strange the sound…_

He turned around as he heard her say: "One thing does not define the other."

Black smirked bitterly, each one of the experiences he had gathered throughout his years weighing heavy upon his shoulders now.

"We'll see about that," he murmured as he started to walk back to the hovel. Yet his voice, suffocating the growing distance between them, echoed in her ears as she closed the door.


	36. Bullseye

Arc IV

Chapter XXXVI

**Bullseye**

* * *

 " _It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me."_

Haruki Murakami ― After the Quake

* * *

The heatwave was reaching its peak, like every year, forcing everyone to stay indoors for as long as possible. Z'unkahrah was like that; an inhabited desert exhibiting signs of civilization on the surface but underneath the streets, the earth would still cry for water. The aristocracy of the city, comfortably enjoying the proximity of the Palace, would not suffocate so easily during the unbearable days of dense heat and thick, warm air. Yet those that weren't so lucky, the ones pushed into the background and doomed to spend their lifetimes in the outskirts of the city, were bound to melt a little every day, waiting for the monsoons to come.

Those whose precarious houses were surrounding the brothel - the _Palace_ for the oppressed ones - knew the respite was only meant to be brief: one week of rain, and the soothing winds coming from the northern region of the continent, like a mathematical break interrupting the normalcy of a virulent, inclement summer.

But for now it was time for vegetation to offer a brownish hue; too dry and withered to provide shelter from the impossible heat decimating the most impoverished corners of the city and forcing everyone to stay inside their houses. Not even the garrisons would dare to come out from their headquarters to patrol the city streets – no matter how strong or professional they were, those soldiers had little to do wandering those empty sidewalks during such consuming hours of intense heat.

Alexandra sighed as she looked out the window; the view from the only casement in Rosario's room was truly breathtaking, even during such days. A canopy of battered, brownish-green stretched itself towards the center of the city, relentless and magnificent, stopping only to allow its shape to meet the horizon, colors melting into the savage, orange shades of the sunset – and past the point of the furious, hellish sky above them, the majesty of the Palace cupolas daring to touch the other canopy; the black and grey blanket of clouds already rolling towards the city, the ones that would bring the rain and the wind they all were waiting for.

"One more day to go. Maybe two," the old Peruvian woman brought her back to reality, but only momentarily.

The doctor and the manager of the House of Pleasure exchanged muted glances that were saying far more than what proper words and syllables could ever pronounce. The brothel was deserted, and even if the heatwave lashing the city was reason enough for that phenomenon to take place, they both knew there was another reason why the audience had dwindled so brusquely: the brutal attack that Rosario had endured.

People were less than partial to violence when it happened in those places reserved only for their pleasure.

The average patron wasn't partial to violence when it happened to those ones admired and respected by the community; the untouchable ones. Seeing them fall at the hands of another common citizen felt like a jab to the chin every time, altering the very framework of society.

The Outworlder system of uneven social statuses and questionable laws had cast them away, pushing them too far from the safe embrace of wealth and stability. Displaced now into a poorer zone, the neglected people living in the outskirts of Z'unkahrah had chosen to erect pagan altars to fake gods and goddesses such as Rosario herself; a simple woman whose only purpose in life was to provide them with a glimpse of pleasure. Something so simple, so basal, yet so hindered by the oppression of inequality.

"I want every girl outside during the festivities. Last year was a mess."

Now, with her second attempt, the manager had positively stolen the doctor from her private world of quiet introspection. The younger woman stood up and walked to the bed where the manager was resting her broken ankle: the heated atmosphere was not helping her recover but Rosario's indefatigable spirit had been enough to push the old woman in the right direction.

"The girls mentioned you wanted an open bar out in the street this year, and even when I find that idea innovative and appealing, I have to remind you that we don't have a permit to sell alcohol outside the brothel," Alexandra said, showing her concerns regarding the organization of the upcoming carnival.

The manager smiled tenderly, a soft gesture showing the younger woman that all those years piled up upon her shoulders had not been in vain.

"The garrisons will be patrolling the area tomorrow night during the festivities. With booze outside, and with our girls entertaining everyone… I don't think they'll have a problem with that, dear."

The carnival was an annual celebration hosted by the House of Pleasure. The ancient Earthrealm ritual would not only give them the opportunity to feel closer to a sense of home they had lost a long time ago but it was also a breather for the tired citizens. Cheaper drinks and the entire staff of Rosario's girls were the catch for hundreds of neighbors to come over and spend the night dancing, chatting and having a good time. Rosario herself had imposed the date every year; she had made a tradition out of a pagan party. At first the date had been set so it would always coincide with the summer solstice but as years went by, Rosario considered the chance of delaying the celebrations until the beginning of the monsoon season and so the Outworld carnival was born: the festivities announcing the ceasing of the suffocating heat and acting like a high-spirited premonition about the imminent rain.

Coming back to the public eye during the carnival was, by far, Rosario's biggest display of power in front of those who had dared to attack her. It was a proclamation of her superiority and resilience, proving everyone that she still was the true monarch for the oppressed ones and showing everyone that she could not be intimidated so easily, that there was no use in threatening her; that beyond the dangers of every political or commercial dispute they still had reasons to celebrate.

"I heard word from the younger girls that garrisons 53-S, 53-F, 53-M and 53-D had already been assigned for the night," the doctor let out softly, trying to mask  _his_  garrison among the others and the manager nodded in silence, a simple sign of complicity letting Alex know that the message had been received.

"What do you want to do tomorrow night?" Rosario asked, the naturality of her words colliding against the doctor's evident state of confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you want to work like the rest of the girls during the festivities, or would you rather stay by my side, and make yourself visible as my second-in-command?"

The doctor paced around the room in silence, visibly trying to absorb Rosario's words in order to determine which one of the possible scenarios would be best for her now that Black was going to be there, observing her every move.

"I'd rather work," Alex let out after a while, "I don't think I'm ready for the attention."

It was true – if there was one thing that she had been dying to do ever since coming to the House of Pleasure, that one thing had been to seize every possible chance to disappear from everyone's eyes. The position that Rosario was trying to force upon her carried more than power and the symbolism of a population in desperate need of false idols. It carried exposition, danger and a lethargic, slow detachment from the last bastions of a receding human condition: it didn't matter if behind closed doors they were still regular women; in their eyes, they were grandiloquent and almighty, and that notion was as frightening as it was nauseating for the conflicted doctor.

"Are you sure?" Rosario insisted, arching her eyebrows as an attempt to make her see that, once again, silence was still more powerful than words.

Black had spent his nights alone in the larder during the days prior to the carnival. By Rosario's insistent requests, the Earthrealm cowboy mercenary had focused his efforts in running a third inventory to positively cross-check his results with the official ones. The doctor had seen little of him during those nights, having chosen to remain all alone inside her room, waiting for the man to provide her with the conclusive results they needed. But even if the words they had exchanged during those nights had been scarce at best, the woman knew Black had not spent all his nocturnal hours inside the brothel. The part of her that still cared about him had been trying to reach him every night, checking up on him, making sure he was not being distracted or ushered by the girl's flirtatious ways, making sure he was alright, or if maybe he needed a drink, or perhaps something to eat; a break, even, if he was feeling too tired to go on. An empty larder had welcomed her each night, during the low, dark hours of obsidian black and complete silence.

Every time she had tried to reach for him he had already been long gone by then.

No  _good-bye_. No  _see you tomorrow_.

The name she had provided him with had clearly ignited his curiosity. He had mentioned something about the need to investigate each one of the possible ramifications of that name, already too invested in the game she had forced him to play. But his final numbers confirmed that twenty-four bottles of Earthrealm strawberry wine, a fine and rare delicatessen in Outworld, were missing from the larder. Someone had been stealing from them and, according to Black's projections and speculations; the situation had been going on for a very long time now.

She had witnessed his eyes, succumbing to the deepest of introspections, his unfocused sight making her whole body invisible for him; his mind too busy, already jumping to conclusions. She begged him to stop, trying to make him see that if it was, indeed, one of Rosario's girls the one behind the missing bottles, it would be best for them – for everyone – if he would just let them handle things as  _domestically_  as possible.

She had watched him leave without saying goodnight, too preoccupied to even show the slightest signs of care or affection towards her. She had lowered her head in silent desperation, already knowing that he would not stop until every loose end had been tied into the secretive net of threats and dangers known as the Rebel-Seekers initiative.

She had feared. Those cold and distant eyes of his had provided her with a tremor she had thought lost to time and oblivion. And yet, she had feared.

For him.

For her.

For everyone she knew and loved.

And most of all, she had feared for El-A.

Alexandra sat on Rosario's bed with eyes full of concern. There was no point in hiding the truth from the old, Peruvian manager of the House of Pleasure, her inquisitive nature was surely going to help her see things as they truly were sooner or later.

"Erron's final inventory has confirmed it,” she said, “twenty-four bottles of strawberry wine are missing from the larder."

Rosario scratched her chin then used her elbows to sit up straight in her bed. She couldn't say she was surprised by Black's discovery – but the feeling of disappointment was hurting for her all the same.

"I'll talk to the girls, but I don't think they are going to tell me anything." Alex let out softly, knowing all too well that she had become a clear figure of authority now for the rest of the girls and authority had little to do with notions such as trust and confidence.

"Ever since Erron started to work here, the younger girls have been behaving rather erratically. I think they knew, all along, that he was capable of exposing them – but I fear they will only cover for each other should we try to force them to speak." The doctor trapped a cigar between her thin lips and lit it up; the dense cloud of smoke engulfing her face in a renewed sense of darkness was not enough to hide her concern. "I'm really worried about El-A. Rumor has it that she's been seeing someone."

"Let her," Rosario sentenced, and her unusually stern voice startled the doctor. "You are neither imprisoned, nor kidnapped. Every single girl can leave as soon as they arrive – in such cases, their deliverers won't get a single coin out of them… but they all have a right to choose: I don't judge those who'd rather stay here than go back to their families; they all have their reasons and every single reason should be reason enough. Those who choose to stay because they have become a burden for their loved ones… those who choose to stay because there's no other life waiting for them outside these walls… or those who choose to stay as an act of obedience or loyalty towards their lovers, their parents… I don't judge them. Never have, never will."

"But…"

"No one is obliged to stay here." Rosario's tone was final, definitive.

"Rumors get worse – they say she's dating the same boy who gave her up in the first place."

"Even if that's the case, let her. Do not judge her." The older woman reached out and brushed her knuckles against Alex's nearest forearm. "I understand your concern: when that boy gave her up last year, he did so because he had no money. Maybe, just maybe, she's been stealing bottles to help him because the quota from her work here is not enough for him anymore. Sometimes the heart has reasons that the mind cannot quite understand, my dear, you should know this better than anyone. We'll talk to her if necessary, but she won't be judged by anyone working with me. Least of all, you."

She could have fooled the girls; she could have fooled Black and even herself into thinking that she enjoyed having power over him, that she enjoyed watching him struggle, that she was amused by his desperate need of affection, forcing him to dance the dramatically changing rhythms of her turbulent heart – but she could never fool Rosario.

"I remember…” the old woman said, “I remember the look on your face; one of such unparalleled sadness and bitterness when we found out that his wife had been murdered."

Of all places Rosario could have chosen to take her, that one, in particular, was still the most hurtful and tormenting one. What she had felt that day, that nauseating combination of contradictory emotions getting the best of her and making her feel as if the ground beneath her feet had just been cracked open. Ever since learning that the emperor had found him guilty of abusing his power, and ever since finding out about his sentence in the maximum security pavilion of the prison, the news regarding the tragic murder of his wife had been the only solid, real piece of information the doctor had heard about the gunslinger. They had murdered his wife while he was in jail – the only thing she could think about back then was the empathic bond of helplessness between them. She couldn't say anything to make him feel better, and his inexistent liberty had prevented the man from actually doing something, anything, to protect his wife.

But when the initial anguish subsided, when the commotion brought by the remnants of a violence she knew too well to ignore had positively allowed her some time to think more clearly, the revelation of that man as a married man made her scream and curse him, from the top of her lungs, feeling deceived and vulnerable once again.

A man of religion, nostalgia… a soldier, a lover. A husband. And now a widower.

She tried to hate him; she tried to convince herself that she had been nothing but a little amusement for the nearly bicentennial man. She had been in denial for far too long, getting lost in pointless comparisons and hateful conclusions: Erron Black had nothing to do with the man she had loved back in Earthrealm – except for those coffee-colored eyes of his, the quiet kingdom of an intriguing familiarity, something she would never confess, something she had tried to keep to herself during the brief time they had shared in the cabin. But when the memory of Nathan turned sepia inside her mind and when those cold, brown eyes became the only bridges left for her to remember the shape of her love, when his advances became too much for her to handle, when her emotions made her weak and exposed… it was already too late.

She had always known – there was no point in falling in love with a man who could not age. So she busied herself with his never-aging body. She hid her soul under the cover of medical concerns and clinical questions that, she knew, he could never answer.

When she discovered that there was more to him than the dangerous life of a heartless mercenary; when she saw the kid, the nurse, the baby he never held in his arms, the past he could never recover, she contented herself with knowing that every sweet, hidden aspect of his personality would always be accompanied by a cruder, more frightening part. Every threat, every sexist comment, every single one of the demonstrations of his chauvinist ways would tell her that she was doing fine, that she was right: falling for a man like that was pointless. But when the illusion faltered, when the fires of the night exposed him as a man willing to rescue her from the dominating grasp of gratuitous violence – that night, he rejected her.

He had abandoned her.

The day she heard his wife had been murdered, she found herself standing on top of that burning mountain all alone again. He had made the choice for her; he had stolen her every possibility. He had condemned her to a new beginning she didn't want to have. He had never been hers, and now he would never be, not even in dreams, not even in wild speculations and fantasies inside her lonely, battered mind. He was somebody else's –  _had been_  somebody else's all along and the little, pathetic spectacle of her days with him was now a poorly constructed tale of her numbed, anesthetized emotions. She hated him then, deeply; resented him for not telling her he belonged to someone else – someone other than the ghosts inside his box of memories.

Her wild speculations kept her up many nights after that day: how could he omit such a crucial part of his life? Maybe he didn't care about his wife, or maybe he cared too much. She was furious at him for hiding his true marital status from her but at the same time, she felt the urgent need to hold him in her arms and tell him everything would be fine and that same uncomfortable, unsettling ambivalence of estranged emotions was still holding her captive today and she knew it - even Rosario seemed to know it as well.

The doctor removed her hand and tried to stand up, but the older woman grabbed her by her wrist and forced her to sit down again: "I remember each one of the terrible things you said about him back then," the manager of the House of Pleasure went on, her tone less and less amicable by the second. "Yet you let him stay with you; you offered him a job… you don't like when the younger girls flirt with him."

Alexandra flinched under Rosario's strong grip.

"I think you like having him near. Like a teenager, that doesn't know how to act around her crush…” the older woman said, “but this is no crush, Dakota. I don't know what's the real story between the two of you and I sure as hell don't want to know a thing about it – but I'm not stupid, girl. I'm old enough to know better than to trust  _his_  version of the story: you are not the daughter of a long lost friend of his; there was only one friend in Black's life and that man only had a  _son_."

The unexpected thought of Aalem filled her eyes with nostalgic tears but the doctor held back the river – she knew her friend like the back of her own hand: Rosario was not angry at her; her words were neither reproachful nor hurtful - she wanted her to open her eyes and finally break free from his enchantment.

"Black doesn't look at you the way he used to look at that boy," Rosario let out softly, as she reminisced Erron's turbulent past like it was only yesterday; his fragile whispers inside her mind bringing back the memories of each one of their private encounters filled with his troubled confessions. "I understand why his bond with the kid was special: he had had an affair with the mother, and for the longest time, he thought that the kid was his." Rosario's eyes softened as she let go from Alexandra's wrist. "Just don't judge El-A, like I don't judge you."

The doctor smirked and offered her friend a bittersweet smile: "You just sounded pretty judgmental to me."

"You're special to him, and it shows," The older woman said as she shrugged innocently before stealing the doctor's cigar from between her lips. "The night when that pig attacked you… I saw him cry for you as he held you in his arms with such love and tenderness… I didn't know he had it in him, really," Rosario confessed before releasing a small puff of smoke. "I guess, in a way, what I'm trying to say is that you're not just another notch in his belt; you know what I'm talking about. It might have started that way – don't tell me, I don't want to hear," Rosario held her hands up defensively, a cheerful smile accompanying the gesture, "but now you're not just another woman for him. And he's not just another man for you."

Alexandra retrieved the cigar from Rosario's hands and put it out in silence. The last, meandering curves of smoke dying slowly in the dirty ashtray.

"I made you the manager of this place during my recovery, but you know I'm not invalid. I could have stayed seated behind the bar while you ran the place under my supervision. You're the doctor here, dear: you knew my condition was never that critical and still you chose to confine me to this bed, and you stopped sleeping with others." The old woman arched her eyebrows again, her voice certain, unequivocal. "And while you tell me over and over again that you don't want to be the new manager of this place, the truth is that now you are the manager. Ever since Black found you that night, you chose not to sleep with anyone and that confirms the fact that you have already moved positions. So let me ask you again: are you sure you want to work tomorrow night?"

The doctor stood up quietly and nodded her head: she wasn’t ready to expose herself so freely during the upcoming festivities, even if that meant going back to the unbearable reality of dirty sheets and frivolous, meaningless flirting.

"Let the girls live their lives beyond these walls," Rosario told the doctor as the younger woman reached for the door. "Time goes by so fast… Not all of them are like you or me; not all of them can just grow old and become managers. It only takes one manager for this place to work."

"I know."

"And we can agree then, that even if their so-called boyfriends are little pieces of shit that don't deserve their love in the slightest, at least they are better than the never-ending queue of assholes waiting to visit their beds night after night."

"Are they, now?" The doctor asked mockingly, her hand already caressing the doorknob. "I know there comes a point when they just have to leave because, like our number one rule states,  _we don't do charity_. Maybe it's a good thing that some of them are bonding, meeting people, even leaving us; if that's what they truly want. But even you can't deny that it can be dangerous."

Rosario's cold stare inspected Alexandra's quiet expression.

"And having the Rebel-Seekers' biggest enemy working here every night isn't?"

Defeated, the doctor left Rosario's room with a bittersweet aftertaste in her mouth. She made her way across the deserted corridor; the doors to each one of the rooms upstairs were open as an attempt to let the air in. While many of the girls were napping alone in their beds, their bodies languid and covered in sweat, a small group had gathered downstairs, near the bar. They were already busy with the dresses they would wear during the festivities, making sure every garment was clean and ready to use.

The doctor busied herself with her old, dark blue dress. It was a rather simple dress, pretty much like a long tank top that stretched itself all the way down around her ankles. It still looked good on her, even at 39, favoring the shape of her shoulders and neck and distracting the attention from her not so ample cleavage. She tried it on and stood in front of the mirror, admiring the last flashes of her receding youth still pulsating inside her then the woman looked around her shoulder to make sure that the many old and whitened scars on her exposed back were still there, taunting her even after all those years. She sighed inaudibly as she ruled out the chance of covering them with a jacket – she was who she was; she felt no need to hide from others the truths she herself had accepted.

When she went back to her room, she found Rosario sitting on her bed. Alexandra killed the distance separating them and sat down, right next to her friend. In a matter of seconds, the doctor produced a little wooden box from her bedside table: two necklaces were there, waiting for Rosario to choose – a simple yet unevenly shaped navy blue stone surrounded by a thin, golden chain and a black stripe of lace adorned by a single pearl in the middle. Rosario picked the blue stone and allowed the chain to snake around the doctor's slender neck. Then she smiled, satisfied with her choice.

"You may think that I know nothing, and you're probably right, my dear. But I  _do_  see things – and lately, the sight I've seen the most is you, struggling with the fact that you want him near."

The doctor rolled her eyes, already anticipating that Rosario was far from finished.

"You decided to hire him; you even created a position for him without consulting me. The fact that he has never come to tell me that he works here now confirms my suspicions that he is willing to do everything in his power to be near you. He knows, dear – the second he mentions his work here, in front of me, I'm going to fire him because, friendships aside, he knows that I know that having an official guard working at a place like this is always problematic."

Alexandra furrowed her brow yet she knew Rosario had a point – she had overstepped her duties as the temporary manager of the brothel by bringing someone like Black in.

"I have always found it odd," the older woman said as she stood up and watched the doctor change into something more comfortable for the night – a simple, long black t-shirt barely covering her thighs. "A woman like you in a place like this… young, beautiful, smart, a doctor. I never asked you why, I know life has a terrible sense of humor." The younger woman climbed into bed in silence, her eyes fixed on Rosario's pensive expression. "Don't fall for Black. He's not a bad man, he's just a professional. He is what he is – even worse: he is what he's chosen to be. Flirt with him, even fuck him if you want to – but just don't fall for him. He waits for no one, my own experience doing the talking here. He can't wait for anyone. You'll grow old and grey but he's still going to be as young and as strong as he is now." Rosario offered a half-smile and tapped the doctor's nearest ankle.

"It's best to let him go before it hurts." There was a brief moment of silence after those words; a well-deserved pause for the old manager. "I assume, since a girl like you ended up in a place like this, that life has already hurt you enough. Don't give it reasons to hurt you even more."

The doctor looked out the window in silence. There was certainty in her friend's words, a certainty she had tried to keep contained inside of her all along.

"The night when he found you and he stayed with you… I thought he was not going to pay for the room. That's when I realized he cares – I wounded him where it hurts the most: his wallet, and he paid anyway." The manager slapped Alexandra's leg with cheerful familiarity, the unexpected sting traveled across the younger woman's skin, forcing her vacant eyes back into their conversation. "But don't play with his patience either - the girls told me how you've been treating the man: you're playing with fire, dear, and I can't protect you from everything, you must be wiser than that."

Alexandra flicked out her tongue childishly, yet deep down she knew Rosario had a point. Black's patience was not meant to be tested: she had learned the lesson the hard way, back in the cabin, the night when he fired his gun at her. The whitened lines on her shoulder were still reminding her of that fact, now perceived through the thin veil of time yet vivid and clear among her memories nonetheless.

Still this colder, more distant and calculative version of herself was all she had left to offer. She could still remember the ire in his eyes the night he had tried to end her for no apparent reason – but most of all, she still remembered the pain he had caused her that other night, the evening of fires and goodbyes, when she had finally made up her mind, accepting him as the only version of something very close to love left for her to hold on to only to find his irrevocable rejection. That small death she had had to endure was reason enough for her to ask him about his dead wife as soon as she could gather the strength to hurt him with her careless words; that small death she had had to endure had been reason enough for her to dare to ask him if he had killed his own wife, knowing that such a bitter accusation could only cause him more pain.

One small death, to compensate for her own small death; the one he had inflicted upon her with his silence and his rejection.

"He's a good friend to me, always has been. Loved him deeply. I never told him though, always knew it wasn't worth the pain. But it doesn't mean I don't have my fair share of things to say to him – this, what happened to me, was his fault. It cannot be ignored." Rosario's expression mutated from a soft, evocative demeanor to a hardened, lip-tight grimace. The doctor knew that sooner or later Black would have to answer for Rosario's current condition.

"Careful, old lady; maybe you'll be the one playing with fire this time," Alexandra's words were not well received by the older woman.

" _I_  need to be careful? I made you manager because I got hurt because of Black and your first decision as a manager is to hire him, without even consulting me?"

The doctor raised both hands in a defensive stance, but Rosario did not give her a chance to speak.

"You have always disregarded my offer to become manager once I'm gone. You like the responsibility, but you run from power. You don't want the exposition, I get that, but I need someone to take my place and there's no one better than you. But ever since Black came our way I don't understand what you're doing anymore. You seem to be enjoying this new power, but we all know you're not. You enjoy this position because it makes you feel superior, because you enjoy rubbing this leverage all over his face. But it's irrelevant, it's pointless. What are you even planning to accomplish by doing this? You want to hurt him? What could cause more pain to a man that cares for you than to watch you sleep with other men when he clearly wants you for himself? But like I said before, ever since you two got reacquainted you haven't slept with anyone – but you're not sleeping with him either."

"You don't know that."

"Bullshit," Rosario yelled, seeing right through the doctor's poorly concealed secrecy. "This reunion is making you unstable. Now you say you are willing to work during the festivities knowing Black's going to be there."

"He won't cause a scene, I assure you," Alexandra tried to sound confident but her voice, weakened, was stating otherwise.

"Oh, so a man as temperamental as Black won't cause any trouble when he sees you headed upstairs with a client because you say so. I wasn't born yesterday, girl. I'm not buying that."

Exasperated and tired, Alexandra tried to sound as definitive as her diminished self-confidence would allow her to be: "If you know he's going to be a problem for us if I choose to work tomorrow night; and if you also know that I don't want the exposition, then why did you make me choose in the first place? I hate to break it to you, but there's never been an actual choice for me." Her frustration was making her see red all around. Inside the belly of an unwanted life that had swallowed her whole, the doctor realized how hard it was to try and talk about the mercenary with somebody who was absolutely clueless about the true nature of the bond uniting them. Rosario didn't know a single thing of their time together, nor was Alexandra willing to open up and let her friend know about everything she and Black had endured together – if anything, and exactly like she had done from the very beginning, protecting of her real identity was still number one priority for the troubled woman. Yet Rosario's support, her friendship and her motherly guidance throughout her years in the brothel were solid pillars questioning the doctor. Such substantial pillars were still wondering where her loyalty really lay – the moments she had spent with Black had been but a few, and they had been torturous and intricate, but Rosario had been by her side for nearly a decade.

Yet the older woman didn't even know the doctor's real name and Black was still there, gravitating menacingly in the outskirts of her sanity, and making her consider her own feelings and emotions once again.

The manager shook her head in silence – the doctor had made a perfectly valid point.

"I didn't judge you when the Population Census came and you chose to stay," Rosario whispered, more conciliatorily now. "A girl like you had nothing to do in a place like this – I'm not even talking about the House of Pleasure anymore; I'm talking about this fucking world. You don't belong here; everyone can see that. When the Census came, I told you I could take you there – I have contacts, people who could have ensured your safe way back home and you knew it, I never hid it from you." With eyes clouded by the reminiscence of those things she still could not understand, Rosario went on: "But you did not want to leave, you wanted to stay.  _That_  was your choice, and everything that happened after that was the result of that choice."

The older woman reached for the door. With closed eyes and a heavy heart, her back turned to the doctor.

"I think you chose to stay because you wanted to see him walking out of that prison; you wanted to see him again." A bittersweet half-smile was adorning the Peruvian woman's visage: "It's like when a relative or a friend gets sick: the decease advances, you know what's going to happen. So you prepare for that moment; you anticipate the loss you're about to suffer. But when the doctor comes out of the room, looks you in the eye and tells you that they're gone all the barricades that you have built disappear and you just don't know what to do."

Rosario's hand was pressed firmly against the doorknob, yet the crestfallen manager looked over her shoulder before leaving the room: "I think you spent ten years building up barricades… But the second that man looked you in the eye, they disappeared." With that, Rosario left the doctor's room.

It didn't take long for the old woman to notice that something was happening downstairs. The muffled cries and the quiet whispers coming from the bar guided her aching bones through the corridor and down the stairs. She cursed herself for having left her walking stick back in her own room; her fragile ankles were struggling with every step along the steep way. She paused, minutely, allowing a moment for her trembling hands to steady her balance on the railing. The shadows pooling around the entrance of the brothel and growing darker by the second were subtly letting her know that whatever was happening down at the bar, it surely had an audience.

All her girls were there – all of them, except for the doctor. From the ones living for the drama to those other ones, the most reserved ones; so whatever spectacle was waiting for her it surely was interesting enough to have gathered the attention of such a wide-ranged public.

She approached the timid crowd with curious eyes.

Wordlessly, Rosario demanded an explanation from them.

"Something's up between Black and El-A," L'amia, or  _the honey-eyed one_ , according to the gunslinger, whispered.

Resolute, the manager ordered the girls to go back to their respective rooms and decided to approach the scene herself. Rosario limped her way to the bar; her mind running wild with countless speculations: of all her girls, El-A was the most flirtatious one and even if Black was a patient man, even the most patient man had his limits. Maybe she had pushed too hard, maybe he was trying to teach her a lesson.

Or perhaps…

She braced herself and hoped for the best, even when she knew  _the best_  was simply too optimistic of a reasoning, even for her taste.  _The best_  was definitely too far-fetched from what she was going to find. The second she saw them, she understood why none of the girls had dared approach them, why they had been so silent and discreet, trying their best to remain as nothing but members of a muted crowd, too horrified to act, too terrified of stepping in and actually do something.

Black had her neck pinned to the wall. It had only taken him a strong push from his elbow to reduce El-A's all possible movements to zero. His other hand, the one with enough leisure and grace to prove the girl that in case she was still in need of further confirmation, he was not bluffing, was holding his peacemaker with such poise and elegance it was hard for Rosario's heart not to falter.

"Strike two, Black."

The manager's voice, like thunder roaring in the night, made the man lose his grip on the defenseless girl. El-A rubbed her throat with shaky hands but remained there, her back still glued to the wall, her legs too shaken to walk away from such a nightmarish situation. "Strike one was when you caused this," Rosario yelled as she showed the gunslinger her wounded ankle. "Strike three and you're out."

He turned around slowly. Symptoms of anger were written all over his nearly bicentennial face.

"I assume you already know that twenty-four bottles of wine have gone missing, Ros," he said before turning his back on Rosario again. Black grabbed El-A by one of her forearms and forced the girl against the counter; his peacemaker was resting on the back of her skull now.

"Let her go, Black," Rosario yelled, her eyes contaminated by the frightening sight of that vicious man threatening the life of one of her younger girls in such a despotic fashion.

"Strawberry wine is too expensive, Ros, and you know it. You can make a small fortune by selling just one bottle in the black market. Imagine the number if you somehow manage to sell two dozen bottles," he roared. He was sweating, she noticed; his face had surreptitiously reddened and he was breathing loudly, panting as if his lungs were starving for air. "Money buys weapons, Ros. Need I say more?"

"Black, let her go. You're chasing ghosts," the doctor pleaded as she approached the scene with eyes full of disbelief.

"Am I now, really?"

When Fá, the third component of El-A's group, knocked on her door and begged the woman to get downstairs as soon as possible, her instinct told her that something was wrong with Rosario and so, the doctor had run to the bar thinking about the manager's old and tired bones but instead, she was met by his protruding eyes, and an ancient wilderness inside his expression, summoning images from her own past with him, like fragments of her memory screaming to be remembered.

She saw him, escorting her to the Palace. Saw his body cornering her against a wall in a dark alley. Saw his gun and his blood; her own fingers coated in the crimson lines streaming down his abdomen.

Saw his peacemaker; and his mouth moving around and mumbling something about saving her from the humiliation of a public execution, back in that dark, small cell in the prison.

Saw the expressionless look in his eyes when she turned around to confirm her suspicions: he had fired his gun at her. He had aimed, and he had finally pulled the trigger.

But she also saw the honesty in his words when they went back to her house. How he had fallen asleep that night, even when she had hurt him. He had trusted her back then, succumbing to slumber in her presence.

She saw the unlocked door, that evening when he helped her escape from prison. He had cared for her back then.

Saw the way he tended to the wound he himself had inflicted upon her shoulder, the way he had tried to kiss her; her hand slapping the man hard across his face as if trying to shake him off his trance.

His darkest colors were always followed by lighter, richer tones. Only now she couldn't tell El-A to wait for such marvelous hues to appear. The doctor was certain: she had been the common element in all those situations; there was no evidence indicating Alexandra that the girl's cries could summon his brighter side.

"You gave me a name, you said that man was recruiting youngsters. She looks young enough to me, and those bottles that went missing… it can't be a coincidence."

"I told you I would talk to the girls myself, Black," the doctor retorted as she stretched one of her arms to reach for his shoulder. The cowboy flinched under her touch but let go of the girl.

"One of my contacts in the black market told me they received a dozen bottles of strawberry wine last night. I found six bottles in her room – the other half-dozen bottles are still unaccounted for," he explained.

Rosario held the trembling girl in her arms and whispered: "Did you steal the wine, El-A?" Her tone was amicable and full of comprehension.

The girl nodded, ashamed.

"Azul needed the money."

Alexandra covered her face with her hands: she had been right all along, El-A's boyfriend was far from done. After a brief moment, the doctor grabbed Black by one of his arms and forced him out of the brothel. Now that they were finally alone, it was best for the man to hear the truth from her.

"Azul," she began, "El-A's boyfriend… his father is the recruiter."

"You knew this?"

"I knew her boyfriend was the son of Ala-m Eré. But I could have never imagined she would be the one behind the missing wine. I didn't even know those bottles were missing until you started to work here."

Black tried to speak but the ire engulfing him was making it impossible for his words to reach the outside.

"This was a terrible idea, forget about our deal. Just go, Erron."

Infuriated, the man grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her vehemently: "The Rebel-Seekers are not a threat anymore, they are disbanded! But we can't let them…"

"Then why do you fight?" She yelled, interrupting him.

"For the people they hurt."

"For your wife, Black,” Alexandra fought back, “you fight because they took something from you."

"They took something from you too, they took something from  _us_ ," he screamed, enraged, from the top of his lungs.

_Aalem._

Determined not to let the memory of the boy shatter her into a million pieces, the doctor pushed the man, freeing herself from his grip. The virulence of those cold eyes of him was truly frightening, yet the woman braced herself for the worst: she had already lost Harry and Aalem because of this dispute; she couldn't allow them to hurt El-A too.

"This is why I was so scared of you back then… but I'm not afraid anymore," she said.

"You should be. The fact that I want you to see  _past my name_  doesn't mean you can forget who I am."

"I know who you are; you're a mercenary. You only care about your own business, your own people, your own interests. Look at them now, Black: your wife, Aalem… they are all dead."

His hands curled into tight fists at the sides of his shaking body.

"I won't let you hurt her, Erron. I can't, she’s one of us," she whispered. "And there's no way you're coming back after this." The woman placed her hands on his broad chest, waiting to see those brighter colors emanating from him but they were nowhere to be found. "Go home and get some sleep," the doctor managed to say after a while in complete silence. "You've been working day and night for some time now, sleep deprivation is…"

He cut her off; bothered by the fact that even then, the woman was unable to see him past her clinical point of view.

"The night when they killed Aalem I told you that you and I were not so different… but you had yet to see it back then." His eyes found hers, his rancor and his anger were still there, encysted deep inside of him. "Do you see it now?  _You_  are the one that only cares about your own business, your own people, your own interests." He turned around and walked away, afraid to know that, this time, she hadn't been able to calm him down like she had always done in the past.

This time, she had failed to summon his brighter tones.


	37. Ferris Wheel

Arc IV

Chapter XXXVII

**Ferris Wheel**

* * *

 " _All the images of carnival are dualistic; they unite within themselves both poles of change and crisis: birth and death (the image of pregnant death), blessing and curse (benedictory carnival curses which call simultaneously for death and rebirth), praise and abuse, youth and old age, top and bottom, face and backside, stupidity and wisdom."_

" _Carnival is a pageant without footlights and without a division into performers and spectators. In carnival everyone is an active participant, everyone communes in the carnival act. Carnival is not contemplated and, strictly speaking, not even performed; its participants live in it, they live by its laws as long as those laws are in effect; that is, they live a carnivalistic life. Because carnivalistic life is life drawn out of its usual rut, it is to some extent "life turned inside out," "the reverse side of the world."_

Mikhail Bakhtin ― Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (both quotes)

* * *

There were real monsters dancing in the streets. Their clumsy movements, so ritualistic-looking and grotesque, were just one of the many reasons why they belonged there, in the carnivalistic life that only the festivities could bring. But those monsters though, as frightening and menacing as they were even if completely immersed in the joy of carnival, were the last thing on her mind.

There were  _other_  monsters, she knew; far more dangerous and vicious than the real monsters. Deformities disguised as regular citizens, eyeing her from the corner of the street.

Rosario stepped outside the House of Pleasure wearing her long white dress; the bridal-like attire marrying her to the city she loved. In her hand, the walking stick looked like a real scepter, embellished by her girls with countless colorful beads – the queen of the oppressed, as they acknowledged her, was finally back.

There was not a single trace of weakness or vulnerability in her rhythm; with her head held high and her eyes, those powerful brown eyes of hers, filled with pride and superiority. She looked over her shoulder and smiled quietly at herself: like she had commanded, every single one of her girls was outside, scattered amongst the citizens, entertaining everyone with their simple candor and their beauty. The old, Peruvian manager greeted them all with subtle movements of her hands, her gestures pure, and her girls grinned softly at her in return, grateful to have her back; proud of her seemingly eternal sense of protection.

As she made her way through the crowd even the Garrisons' chiefs took a moment to salute her. Rosario smiled for them, knowing all too well that those men had been sent from the Palace to monitor the festivities – it was best for them to be on good terms with one another, after all.

The chiefs seemed joyful. Cheerful, even. The old woman nodded to herself the second she realized all of them were holding glasses of wine between their hands: not only she wouldn't need to worry about the fact that they were selling alcohol outside the brothel without an official authorization – they were consuming it.

"I don't see any soldiers…" Rosario reflected out loud after a few seconds of silent contemplation.

"We ordered them not to wear their uniforms tonight," the captain of Garrison 53-F let her know. "We thought their uniforms could interfere with the spirit of the carnival, so we let them wear their own clothes; it'll be easier for them to blend in that way."

"If you say so," Rosario patted his shoulder lightly, a wide smile on her lips. "If you'll excuse me, gentlemen…" she said before turning around, "please, enjoy the carnival."

The queen of the oppressed continued to make her way through the loud crowd until she saw the doctor: that simple, long blue dress sure was a head-turner, she thought to herself. Dakota was already chatting with a potential customer, a rather young man that looked as nervous as if that was his first time talking to a woman. As she walked past the doctor, Rosario's hand brushed her shoulder lightly, causing the younger woman to turn around. No words were exchanged, just a comfortable silence. She seemed fine; Rosario thought, relieved to know that her friend and protégé was finally feeling at ease again. The choice was also smart: nothing better than a virgin to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

Now that the doctor was busy, the manager's eyes wandered the streets looking for the missing gunslinger. Bound by duty, he was forced to be there until the festivities were over, only he was nowhere to be found. As painful as it was for her, the woman got on her tiptoes trying to find a cowboy hat somewhere inside the moving crowd but just when she was beginning to scan her surroundings, her eyes were met by two scornful smiles blocking her sight.

"Welcome back, Rosario," the woman greeted her. "It's been a while."

"Care to join us for a glass of wine, dear? We sure have a lot of catching up to do," the man said as he grabbed her by her forearm and guided through the streets. The three of them sat by a table placed just outside the brothel were two other men were waiting for them –  _El Club de los Amantes_ , in all its decadent glory, was complete.

The manager hid her concern under a façade of false determination: Black and his potential anger would have to wait and the doctor, in case the volatile gunslinger was to cause a fuss the second he saw her with another man, would have to deal with him on her own. Those eyes scrutinizing her now were enough for the old, Peruvian woman to understand that even if the carnival was her tacit coronation; her grandiloquent exhibit of power, those people surrounding her were the intricate chess pieces that could scream check-mate to the queen so, without losing a moment, the clever woman greeted them all and ordered her girls to serve them a round of the brothel's finest wine.

"Always the perfect hostess," the woman cheered rather gleefully, pretending to be engaged in small talk and empty pleasantries but Rosario knew them all like the back of her hand.

Del' L Agua-Ribbay, the woman in question, was the one responsible for providing free shelter to the Rebel-Seekers when they needed a place to hide. Her fancy inn placed in the most elegant portion of the city was the perfect place for them to hide in plain sight. Sitting at her right was Etienne. No last name to attach him to any possible bloodlines, just a bunch of twisted stories and anecdotes linking him to a very rich French woman that had made him her only heir. Loaded with money and bad intentions, the man had found himself in Outworld and his talent for sin had brought him right into the Rebel-Seekers' nest: now the man was in charge of the logistics behind every single one of their moves. Eyeing Rosario from across the table there was Rhú Zed,  _the facilitator_ , the one establishing connections inside the Royal Palace and gathering intel right from under the emperor's nose. Last but not least, Ala-m Eré's older brother, Sirg-kún Eré, was seated right beside Rhú Zed. The man was in charge of training and fully indoctrinating the young recruits after his younger brother would convince them to join their cause.

"To Rosario," the facilitator raised his glass to propose a toast. "Like they say in the realm where you come from,  _long live the queen_." All glasses clicked in unison and smiles were shared but the manager of the House of Pleasure soon found herself realizing wine had never tasted so bitter.

"Never mind about the man who attacked you, dear," Del' L Agua-Ribbay whispered, "that's been taken care of."

Stupefied initially but gradually giving in to the realization of what those people were truly capable of, Rosario grinned softly and nodded her head in silence. A part of her felt safe enough to know that it would take someone really brave or really stupid to ever cross her again after that incident yet another part of her couldn't help but feel the obvious repulsion of being in their debt, even when she had never asked them to do something about it.

"Dear, I would hate to ruin the fun, but the reason why we're here tonight has little to do with the festivities," Etienne began, placing his now empty glass on the table. "We are truly worried and we thought you could be the one providing us with some much-needed answers."

"You see," Del' L Agua-Ribbay continued rapidly, "rumor has it that you've hired Erron Black."

There was no point denying it: after the incident between the mercenary and El-A, there wasn't much for her to do to cover the mercenary and the position her protégé had created for the man. Surely the girl had spoken to her so-called boyfriend and the boy had subsequently passed the news to his father, the recruiter, and his father, in turn, had spoken to his brother, the indoctrinator.

"At first we thought it was a joke," Etienne added, "a  _very_  bad joke… we don't really need to tell you how much that despicable man has hindered our organization."

"I don't think Erron Black poses a threat to your organization anymore," Rosario speculated out loud, trying to divert their attention from the answer she knew she had yet to give. "He's just a simple Garrison soldier now, he doesn't even live at the Palace anymore – his ties have been brutally severed."

"But still, dear, we certainly don't like the idea of him sniffing around," Sirg-kún Eré explained before signaling one the girls to refill his glass. "We know for a fact that he works for you now but the thing is:  _we don't want him to_."

Rosario raised her hands defensively and furrowed her brow: she was going to play her last card against the members of El Club de los Amantes but for that to happen, she needed every actor to be in the right place, at the right time. She scanned her surroundings quickly to make sure every single piece of the puzzle could be used in her favor, then began: "I only hired the man because he was getting rather…  _persistent_." Her voice was suggestive, the story compelling and engaging from the very beginning. "He has always been one of our regular clients; his time in prison kept him away but as soon as he was free, he came back and he became infatuated with one of my girls,"

"Let me guess: Dakota," Sirg-kún Eré interrupted her, causing the Peruvian lady to nod in agreement.

"But she was not interested," Rosario tried to continue but the man cut her off again.

"I thought prostitutes didn't get to  _choose_  their customers. We know all about your policy: they don't get to choose their clients; as long as they're willing to pay they're all accepted into the House of Pleasure. We know you  _don't do charity_." His words were impertinent and defying, yet Rosario grinned and went on.

"Dakota blames him for what happened to me," she confessed. "Black beat the shit out of the man who attacked me… This pig was hurting her and Black stopped him, then he sent him tumbling down the stairs. He thought she was going to find his actions heroic, but he was wrong: the woman despises him… and now he's doing everything in his power to get closer to her again. If I had to be honest, I think he likes her." She bit her lip almost instantly, regretting her words: Black was their enemy; they didn't need to know the man had a weak spot for the doctor.

"So you hired him to help him get close to her?" Del' L Agua-Ribbay pondered contemplatively. "But it didn't work out well for him, is that alright?"

"Exactly," Rosario agreed, "in the end, I had to let him go, the situation had become completely unsustainable: the girl was being loyal to  _me_  and I was trying to force her to sleep with him. It just didn't feel right." The manager of the brothel raised her chin to indicate the group to watch the scene with their own eyes: the doctor was still chatting to the young man and a somber Erron Black, alone and with his back against the wall, was watching them from afar.

A group of Rosario's girls surrounded Black and greeted him seductively. The cowboy mercenary waved his hands dismissively, yet they all brushed their hands against his shoulders and kissed his cheekbones before leaving his side – his fellow soldiers laughed at him, but the man seemed to pay no mind.

"See? They all know the man. Such an avid customer..." Rosario let out softly, wrapping up every detail of her story. "Most of my girls pity him: he could have any of them yet he wants the only one he knows he can't have."

They all returned their gazes to the old, Peruvian queen of the oppressed – mockery reflected all over their faces: a defeated Black was certainly an entertaining concept for them. It was Del' L Agua-Ribbay the one who brought them back to the actual course of their meeting: "And about this girl; Dakota… We've been informed you want her to become your successor."

Rosario nodded in silence. Pride was visible all over her expression.

"The problem is… Black is interested in her and it would be a real shame if he could, somehow, get close to her again," the facilitator said. "Being close to your successor means being close to  _power_. We are not exactly comfortable with that, you see."

Feeling aggravated, Rosario's deep, raspy voice fought the man: "I will be the one in charge of choosing my own successor. Not  _you_."

"There's no need to get all heated up by a simple commentary, my dear," Del' L Agua-Ribbay tried her best to sound sympathetic. "We respect your decision, even when we had already thought about someone else."

"Let me guess: El-A," Rosario retorted mockingly. "I can't trust the woman who stole from me."

"But you haven't fired her either," Del' L Agua-Ribbay confronted her, even if her tone was still amicable and conciliatory.

"Everybody deserves a second chance," Rosario explained, more calmly this time, "but that doesn't mean I shall be putting the future of this place in her hands. She's too young, too immature… Dakota has been with me for more than ten years now; she knows the people, knows the business."

"It will take us some time to trust her," Sirg-kún Eré added.

"It will take  _me_  some time to prepare her for the future as well," Rosario tried to go on but her eyes betrayed her and her surprised expression caused them all to look over their shoulders to see what was going on: the doctor and the young man were about to get inside the brothel; she had finally made it – she had turned him into a customer. Rosario held her breath until their bodies got lost behind the front door but she knew she wasn't out of the woods just yet: a visibly enraged Erron Black was marching behind them; the fury inside his eyes was threatening to destroy her whole version of the story.

"If you'll excuse me…" Rosario whispered worriedly as she stood up, grabbed her walking stick and made her way back to the House of Pleasure.

"Someone's jealous," Etienne's voice's brushed the manager's ears but there was no time to turn around now: she needed to stop Black from ruining everything. Walking as fast as she could, the woman stepped inside the brothel and grabbed the angry mercenary by one of his shoulders, forcing the man to turn around: the look in his eyes was truly frightening, as if a million demons had just been unleashed from deep within him.

"Black, stop," she ordered him yet he broke free from her grip and moved closer to the stairs, determined to follow the doctor and her client. "Black, stop!" She commanded again, screaming this time.

He turned around abruptly and cornered the old woman against the bar: "I thought she was your equal now – I thought she wouldn't be  _working_  anymore" He yelled furiously.

Hearing their discussion downstairs, the doctor made an appearance even though she was still standing by the staircase. Just like Black's, her exasperation and discontent were written all over her face.

"Who do you think you are, Black?" Alexandra yelled as she forced the gunslinger to let her friend go. The poor young boy accompanying her scratched the back of his head in disbelief, looking puzzled by the situation.

Noticing the young man that was still eyeing him from a comfortable distance, the mercenary walked up to him.

"Leave," he ordered.

"You have no right," an enraged Alexandra vociferated but it was too late: as soon as the young boy saw the uncontained fury inside Black's eyes he ran away from the brothel and back into the crowded streets. Rosario covered her face with her hands for a short moment then looked at the doctor:  _I told you so_ was the message encrypted inside those eyes.

"How much for a shift?" Black asked, already searching his pockets.

"What? No." The doctor shook her head, offended by his mere presence.

"How much for the  _whole night_?" He insisted, his voice louder than before.

The doctor begged her friend not to accept his offer yet Black was persistent, collecting every coin, every bill he was carrying with him. Rosario shrugged her shoulders and Alexandra exhaled, defeated: she knew the manager would never reject such a generous offer.

"How much for  _exclusivity_?" He asked, finally.

The word hurt her, deeply. Rosario took the money he had to offer yet she shook her head pensively.

"I'm afraid we don't do that anymore," she whispered. "Exclusivity is off-limits."

None of the managers of The House of Pleasure had been seduced by the regular incomes that exclusivity could bring. All throughout the years, the very notion of _exclusivity_ had been portrayed as vain and unpromising: there was no point in reserving a certain girl for a certain client even if said client was obliged to pay a weekly quota for the girl regardless of actually using the service or not. A variety of clients ensured a variety of payments – exclusivity was just  _no good for business_. Yet there had been an exception, many years ago, and both Black and Rosario knew it.

Rosario had been the exception, and Black had been the customer.

"How much, Ros?" The mercenary insisted.

"This is ridiculous, Black: you are supposed to be working," Alexandra tried to reason with him but her intentions were met by his cold gaze and his rigid jawline.

"Seems I'm not the only one." The mercenary turned around again, his attention still fixed on Rosario's dubitative expression.

"I said exclusivity is off-limits, Black," the manager finally answered, her resolve seemed final.

Way back then, when he had insisted, he had only been looking for a confessor. But as time went by, she quickly found herself growing fonder and fonder of him. One day he never returned: he had married someone else.

He had left her there, all alone and feeling used. That very same day she had looked at her own face in the mirror only to find that the first symptoms of a certain, irreversible aging process were already there, telling her all about the tales of a woman who had wasted her youth by trying to stop the inevitable: his youth was unstoppable, and now he wasn't even hers. He had never been hers - not even during those borrowed hours when she would mistake closeness for love.

"Very well," the cowboy spat disdainfully, knowing that the manager's refusal was deeply rooted in their own past. "This should be enough for the night," he said as he handed the manager every bill and every coin that was in his possession. Rosario took the money, yet a bitter expression took over her features: the woman was mortified by the complex dynamics behind Black and the doctor's bond, but she knew she could not let them drag  _her_  down along with them.

"It's raining, finally," Sirg-kún Eré interrupted them, quickly joined by the rest of the members of El Club de los Amantes. "Hope you don't mind if we continue our meeting indoors," he said as the four of them made their way inside the brothel and sat by the bar. When Rosario, Black, and Alex looked out the window they noticed the raindrops and the wind adorning the happy faces of the people still dancing outside. It was clear the monsoons were not enough to stop those citizens from ending their joyful night prematurely. Rosario looked at Alexandra and her lips shaped the word _sorry_ even when no sound came out of her mouth. Then the manager slapped the doctor across the face, in front of a stunned Black.

"Business is business, dear. No-one has ever paid us this much for a night with you," she scolded the doctor, even when her eyes had softened, as if already begging her confused friend for forgiveness. "Now go, do your job."

The doctor tried to protest but Black grabbed her by the shoulder and led the woman upstairs – they had an audience to impress now, he knew.

As soon as the cowboy and her friend had disappeared from her sight, the manager of the House of Pleasure joined the members of El Club at the bar and poured herself a drink.

"That was harsh," the facilitator commented.

"Business is business," Rosario shot back, finishing her glass in one sip.

"But if she doesn't want to sleep with him…" Etienne tried to intervene but Rosario's cold, definite stare forced the man not to say another word.

She put Black's money on the bar in front of them and sentenced: "I appreciate her loyalty, but business is business." Her tight fist landed on the bills; the sound of her roaring fury reverberated through the room in perfect concordance with the first thunders of the night. "She may be my successor, she may even be my protégé – but I'm the only boss here. I'm the only one who makes the rules."

* * *

 Arc IV

Chapter XXXVII

**leehW sirreF**

* * *

 " _It was a peculiar game. This peculiarity was evidenced, for example, by the fact that the young man, even though he himself was playing the unknown driver remarkably well, did not for a moment stop seeing his girl in the hitchhiker. And it was precisely this that was tormenting: he saw his girl seducing a strange man, and he had the bitter privilege of being present, of seeing at close quarters how she looked and of hearing what she said when she was cheating on him (when she had cheated on him, when she would cheat on him); he had the paradoxical honor of being himself the pretext for her unfaithfulness._

_This was all the worse because he worshipped rather than loved her; it had always seemed that the girl had reality only within the bounds of fidelity and purity, and that beyond those bounds it simply didn't exist; beyond those bounds she would cease to be herself, as water ceases to be water beyond the boiling point. When he now saw her crossing this horrifying boundary with nonchalant elegance, he was filled with anger."_

Milan Kundera ― Laughable Loves (The Hitchhiking Game)

* * *

The man could not believe his eyes. The familiar monsters dancing in the street were blending in amongst the festive people way better than he was. His cowboy hat and his stern expression had little to do with the spirit of the carnival, he knew, yet the shape of those singular monsters and their public displays of joy and apparent, unrestrained happiness were more welcomed in the crowd than he was.

He still was Erron Black, that much was true, and while many people chose to ignore him others could only offer him looks full of discontent and suspicion. The mercenary scratched his chin as he glued his back to the nearest wall: he didn't want to be there; he wasn't interested in the carnival or in any of the pagan festivities they were celebrating. He was on duty, just like the rest of his fellow soldiers – scattered around the streets and disguised as normal, regular citizens.

The Garrisons' chiefs wanted them to  _blend in_. Yet he knew  _to blend in_  was never an option for a man like him.

"Bang, Bang! Dance!" Ferra tried to summon him, as she tried to call him on inside the nearly primitive, ritualistic dance that was engaging her small body. Torr mumbled and groaned loudly right next to the tiny enforcer and that was when Black noticed it: the monster had its face uncovered; it was like they belonged there, in the circus of joy and ecstasy that Rosario had manufactured for the oppressed ones. It was almost as if they were  _home_  – only home was meant to exist for one night and one night only.

Black raised one of his hands to say hello to the official enforcer then looked the other way – not only it was odd for the man to watch the symbiotic pairing so invested in such peculiar activities… that small, child-like woman was a cruel reminder for him, still talking about everything and everyone he had lost along the way. Ferra grimaced, almost as if letting a small fraction of nostalgia or maybe even sadness get a hold of her but it was only momentarily – in a couple of seconds she was dancing again, her constant companion roaring like a thunder, his arms in the air, as if trying to reach for the sky and force it to rain down on them. Black looked down pensively - that was what he was: a small fraction of bitterness in a sea of foreign happiness.

Rosario's magnificent white dress caught his attention the second he spotted her. The old cowboy observed the woman in silence as she made her triumphant way through the crowd; as she reclaimed what was rightfully hers: the place inside their hearts reserved exclusively for the queen of the oppressed. It was really hard for him to imagine the doctor achieving something quite like that – such fervent, passionate demonstrations of love and devotion required the genius, the mastermind of someone exactly like Rosario herself. Alexandra was colder, more distant and calculative than his former lover. Rosario could teach the doctor how to run the business; he himself could teach her all about financial administration yet that love, that profuse sentiment that Rosario inspired in others was something she would have to achieve on her own and, in the long run, that was going to be her one true test: learning how to gain their love, their support, their suffocating neediness.

Learning how to deal with the members of El Club de los Amantes was also going to demand an effort from the stubborn doctor. Those were difficult people; their interests were intricate, and their loyalties were shady, to say the least. Yet the bond uniting The House of Pleasure with El Club de los Amantes had always been a bridge consolidated after years of mutual, reciprocated parallelisms – it seemed, in a way, one entity could not exist without the other.

The House of Pleasure had created El Club de los Amantes several decades ago and El Club had become, in time, a carefully manufactured aristocracy living inside the confinement that was the brothel – yet El Club de los Amantes had provided The House of Pleasure with interests placed far beyond the limits of the brothel.

Black bit his lower lip the second he saw Rosario sitting down with those four people. He didn't know their names but it was clear that El Club was now in session – a public sort of session; a clear dispute for power: while Rosario was obviously trying to make it clear for everyone that the queen was back, the members of El Club were subtly telling everyone:  _yes, she's back – but on our own terms._

There were three men and a woman accompanying Rosario now and they all seemed very elegant and classy. The woman was wearing a long, forest green dress that matched her bright, green eyes. Her hair was long and black, and her skin looked sun-kissed and unwrinkled. There was something Arabian about the way she looked, a peculiar Arabic resemblance embellishing a perfect Outworld female specimen. The men, even if dressed in expensive-looking attires like embroidered tunics and silky robes, did not have a single physical quality to them that could make them stand out from the rest. They were regular Outworlders disguised as important people – whether they were actually important or not, Black did not know. They seemed to be fully engaged in small talk and conversation now and, for a moment, the gunslinger dropped his guard and stopped staring at them: Rosario was a smart, courageous woman; she was surely going to find a way to deal with them discreetly, there was no need for him to worry so much about the manager - especially when there were  _other things_  for him to worry about.

The doctor was still speaking with an unknown young man.

The potential customer seemed nervous, even insecure; it looked almost as if he had never talked to a woman before. Black found that suspicious: that long blue dress could have placed her near any man she could have desired. Why would she ever waste her time like that by considering that tomboy? Maybe he was just an informant, he considered briefly until her hands landed on the young man's shoulders and the woman leaned in, her lips brushing his. Hands at the sides of his own body, the shy man grinned softly at the doctor the second their mouths parted. Feeling the first lashes of an ancestral, uncontainable fury dwelling deep inside of him Black was left with no other choice but to accept that the man was not an informant, and that even if his obvious lack of experience had made him look dubious at first, if the woman was persistent enough things would escalate rather quickly. He wanted to punch that man in the face and steal the woman from his arms although he didn't want her for himself either – not like that; not if  _business_  was involved. Unable to look away, the mercenary concluded that, with Rosario's triumphant return to the spotlight, the doctor had chosen to go back to her previous job – the mere thought of her bed, invaded by countless strangers in the vain pursuit of pleasure in exchange for money made his stomach churn in complete revulsion.

A bunch of girls – Rosario's girls – came to greet the lone gunslinger. They danced around him, caressed his body and kissed him lightly in his face but the man was simply not interested. If anything, they were vague distractions in a night filled with monsters and empty promises. How could people enjoy these festivities so much? How was it that music and alcohol were enough to make them forget all about the miseries of life? How could this night be so goddamned powerful? Powerful enough to make them all forget that those creatures dancing with them were real, actual  _monsters_. Powerful enough to make them all forget that those lovely, beautiful nymphs were  _professional_  lovers, unable to provide them with any actual feelings.

Love, he realized, was elsewhere.

He greeted the girls and watched them leave. The lascivious words pouring from the rest of the soldiers' mouths were making a fool out of him:  _always had a thing for the whores_ ,  _the whores' favorite soldier_ he heard them say. Black rolled his eyes and gave them the finger – a gesture he knew they wouldn't understand. He had seen them all entering the House of Pleasure many times; had seen them all, marching downstairs and looking exhausted after countless marathons of pre-paid sex. Still, they had chosen to pick on him, like they always did, even when they all knew Black had seen them sin and even when they all knew Black had chosen to keep his mouth shut each time they had lied to their wives in front of him.

"You all do the same…" he mumbled to himself, "and I'm not even _doing it_."

Black's horrified gaze returned to the doctor: she was taking the man by the hand now and she was smiling broadly; she seemed delighted by his company. She seemed happy,  _genuinely_  happy.

They were walking now. She was leading him inside the House of Pleasure.

Determined to stop her charade, the wrathful gunslinger followed the improvised couple. All the inexplicable loathing and the unparalleled abhorrence he had been feeling inside of him; all the uneasiness that had accompanied his every move ever since finding the doctor in that filthy place was finally shaping up inside of him.

Hate.

The only thing he was able to feel was hate.

That was what had been bothering him so much: he was adaptable, resilient, he was a patient man – but he was also narrow-minded and coming to terms with his own feelings and emotions was something he had never considered an actual option. He felt something for her, it was painfully obvious now.

For  _her_  – not for the memory that she had awaken. She had  _surpassed_  the memory.

That's why he had pulled the trigger that night; he wasn't trying to stop the memories: he was trying to stop  _her_  from becoming bigger than the memories, from creating  _new ones_. When she became bigger than the memories he abandoned her, allowing the flames of his own past to take her away from him for good but it was too late – all those years locked up in a small cell proved that the woman had already created new memories for him. And now he was supposed to watch her leave with another man.

"Black, stop," Rosario yelled him the second he set foot inside the brothel yet the mercenary broke free from her tight grip and moved closer to the stairs, determined to follow the doctor and her client.

"Black, stop!" She commanded again.

He turned around abruptly and cornered the old woman against the bar: "I thought she was your equal now – I thought she wouldn't be  _working_  anymore," he yelled furiously, unable to hide the hatred running wildly through his veins.

She must have heard their voices roaring in the night. She must have sensed that they were arguing about her. Her exasperation and discontent were written all over her face.

"Who do you think you are, Black?" Alexandra yelled as she forced the gunslinger to let her friend go. The timid customer stood still by the stairs, confused by the decadent scene he was witnessing. Noticing the young man eyeing him from a comfortable distance, the mercenary walked up to him as menacing as can be.

"Leave," he commanded.

"You have no right," an enraged Alexandra vociferated but it was too late: as soon as the young boy saw the uncontained fury inside Black's eyes he ran away from the brothel and back into the crowded streets.

"How much for a shift?" Black asked, already searching his pockets. He hated what time had done to her, he hated the fact that he had wasted her best years while he was rotting away in prison, he hated her inevitable aging. He hated himself for not getting her to a portal when it  _still mattered_. He hated his own memories; hated the fact that his own sad mind had fooled him into thinking that Amanda's indomitable spirit was still alive inside her big, blue eyes. He hated the fact that he had dared to compare her to Annie, to the image of love and benevolence that the nurse still represented inside his heart. He hated the fact that he had wasted his own wife's last years trying to look after the memory of two people – his beloved Amanda and the original Alexandra he had met back then when they were, in fact, long gone. He hated himself, in the vivid memory of the humiliation Zar had had to endure the night before the Census deportation. He hated the fact that he had run to save her life, trying to make sure she wouldn't end up like Annie, and she had killed the memory of Amanda in return.

"What? No," the doctor shook her head, offended by his mere presence.

"How much for the  _whole night_?" He insisted, his voice louder than before.

He hated the fact that, in order to protect her, he had had to kill her in his own version of the story. He had erased her from the world and yet there she was, still pulsating inside him, vehement and uncontainable.

The doctor begged her friend not to accept his offer yet Black was persistent, collecting every coin, every bill he was carrying with him. Rosario shrugged her shoulders and Alexandra exhaled, defeated: Black knew the manager would never reject such a generous offer.

"How much for  _exclusivity_?" He finally asked.

"I'm afraid we don't do that anymore," Rosario whispered after shaking her head rather pensively. "Exclusivity is off-limits."

He hated the fact that  _hating her_  was not enough. He hated to know that the war against time was already lost.

"How much, Ros?" The mercenary insisted.

"This is ridiculous, Black: you are supposed to be working," Alexandra tried to reason with him but her intentions were met by his cold gaze and his rigid jawline.

"Seems I'm not the only one."

The mercenary turned around again, his attention still fixed on Rosario's dubitative expression.

"I said exclusivity is off-limits, Black," the manager finally answered, her resolve seemed final.

"Very well," the cowboy spat disdainfully, knowing well that the manager's refusal was deeply rooted in their own past. "This should be enough for the night," he said as he handed the manager every bill and every coin that was in his possession. Rosario took his money, yet a bitter expression took over her features: maybe she was reminiscing, he thought.

"It's raining, finally," a man interrupted them. "Hope you don't mind if we continue our meeting indoors," he said as he was joined by two men and a woman, the same people he had seen earlier that night. The four strangers didn't wait for an answer and sat by the bar. When Rosario, Black, and Alex looked out the window they noticed the raindrops and the wind adorning the happy faces of the citizens still dancing outside. It was clear the monsoons were not enough to stop those citizens from ending their joyful night prematurely and it was also clear that the members of El Club de los Amantes had chosen to get inside in order to catch a glimpse of what was truly going on between the ex-enforcer and Rosario's successor.

Rosario looked at Alexandra and her lips shaped the word _sorry_ even when no sound came out of her mouth. Then the manager slapped the doctor across the face, in front of a stunned Black.

"Business is business, dear. No-one has ever paid us this much for a night with you," she scolded the doctor, even when her eyes had softened, as if already begging her friend for forgiveness. "Now go, do your job."

The doctor tried to protest but Black grabbed her by the shoulder and led the woman upstairs – they had an audience to impress now, he knew.

"What do you think you're doing?" The doctor whispered in his ear.

"I just bought us a night of freedom," he said. "Let's use it wisely."


	38. The Lost Art of Conversation

Arc IV

Chapter XXXVIII

**The Lost Art of Conversation**

* * *

 " _Let me have another cigarette._

_Sigh…_

_I'm a little tired._

_I'm not used to this, talking so honestly about myself._

_One thing I want to affirm: I don't have any sexual desire towards you, a woman. As I said before, I am very angry at the fact that I can only be myself. Being a single individual makes me terribly unhappy. I can't stand odd numbers. So I don't want to sleep with you as you the individual._

_How wonderful it'd be if you could be split in two, and I could be split in two, and those four people could share a bed. Don't you agree?"_

Haruki Murakami – The Kangaroo Communiqué – from The Elephant Vanishes

* * *

As soon as they entered her room the doctor let go from Black's hand and walked straight to the bathroom. The mercenary stood alone then, in the middle of the obscure bedroom with only the incessant sound of the rain outside to keep him company.

"I can see you," he said after a moment, noticing her shape sitting down on the bathroom floor. The contour of her body was the only distinguishable element in that small, dark redoubt; barely adorned by the weak shadows pooling all around her.

"You're one hundred and eighty-something, right?" She exhaled; eyes closed. "Shouldn't you be blind by now?"

Black tried to follow the woman, but he couldn't see past the tip of his own boots. Still, he ventured the room nonetheless, but now with a different destination in mind: he walked towards the balcony and opened the blinds to let some light in. The heat coming from the outside was still suffocating but at least the rain, the mere sounds of those drops falling from the sky, seemed refreshing enough. The doctor looked over her shoulder, but she didn't say a word: deep down she knew the storm was only going to grow stronger with time so maybe, just maybe, keeping the balcony open should prove useful in the future, allowing some fresh air in.

"Let me see that," Black said as he motioned towards the bathroom and kneeled in front of the woman – there still wasn't enough light for him to see the effects that Rosario's so-called punishment had inflicted upon the doctor's skin. The woman flinched and removed Black's hand from her cheek the second she felt his digits touching her face then she stood up, and made her way to the balcony: all those silver-colored raindrops, rocked by the new-born wind, were coming every which way and, some of them, were even venturing the room. She placed her hands on the railing; her body standing in the rain, then she cocked her head slightly, her chin gliding tenderly as if trying to summon those cold raindrops and make them slide down her still burning cheek.

"It doesn't look that bad."

Only then she looked over her shoulder to find him standing a few steps behind her; his arms were crossed over his chest. Still, she didn't say a word and Black, noticing the coldness in her eyes, raised his hands in a defensive stance, taking a few steps backward until the back of his knees touched the bed. He sat down on it and watched her move away from the balcony only to sit down on the floor, now safe from the rain but still focused on the outside.

The gunslinger looked away as he began to form the question inside the barrier of his lips. He waited on it for a few more moments, already anticipating the hell he was about to unleash. He braced himself when he felt ready, opened his mouth, and finally let it out.

"Why are you so angry at me?"

The silence that followed startled him deeply as it stretched across the room, demarcating a tacit barrier between them. He had expected her to see red all around the second she heard those words – he was expecting  _her_  words to lash out at him with the brutality of an awaken beast but the only sounds left there to break the night were the drunken, incoherent sentences of two garrison guards, headed upstairs with two of Rosario's girls. Their silhouettes, clumsily approaching the rooms across the one where they were staying were now visible at the other side of the balcony; there was music still coming from the inner courtyard below them: in spite of the storm, the carnival was far from over or so it seemed.

"Well, that's one less thing to worry about…" Black commented, seemingly unpreoccupied, the second he recognized those faces getting lost behind doors at the other side of the building. Those were garrison soldiers, just like him - and just like him, they were supposed to be working.

The woman brushed her own lips with the tip of her fingers as she considered his words: even when she still was not willing to talk to the man, a part of her couldn't help but feel aggravated by his careless remarks: of course that was one less thing for him to worry about; the fact that his fellow guards were now visiting those bedrooms could only make him look less and less guilty in the eyes of his superiors - he was not the only one doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing, there was something cynical about that train of thought, she reckoned bitterly, as if masquerading his own shortcomings in the pleasant domains of shared, collective shortcomings was somehow better than doing the right thing.

"You still haven't answered my question."

The woman turned around and raised her chin; staring intently into his eyes.

"You think I don't know that?"

Black took off his hat and let it rest on the bed. Then he got up and walked towards the balcony, walking past her, his body leaned against the doorframe, his eyes lost in the rain outside. He crossed his arms over his chest once more, then shook his head.

"Women with an attitude… never much liked those," he let out without so much as breaking a sweat. Something in the way he had said those words reminded her of the old Erron Black, the one she had met so many years ago; the one who never helped her get back home.

"Could you be any more of a misogynist?" Alexandra replied harshly. "Forgive me, I must have forgotten that you were born in the Mesozoic era; do you need me to tell you what that means?"

"Which one?" Black asked as he motioned towards her and kneeled in front of the hard-looking woman. "Misogynist or Mesozoic?" He smiled scornfully at her as he sat down on the floor, stretching his legs so his back could touch the nearest wall. "Not everything is my fault, sugar. I know it's just easier for you to blame it all on me: look, it's raining outside; it must be Black's fault."

He paused for a moment as he surveyed her face for expressions and emotions that weren't there anymore or so it seemed.

"I might be impulsive, but I'm not stupid: I know not everything is my fault. This is not on me – it's on  _you_. When I left you on that mountain you could have chosen anything, but you chose this. I did not make you a prostitute, you made that choice yourself. I can't blame you for trying, though; I remember I blamed them when they killed Annie…  _Annie died because they murdered her, Annie died because they burnt down the place…_ " He stopped abruptly and leaned in closer. With eyes as cold as ice, Black went on: "Annie died because I wasn't there. Annie died because I chose another woman. It took me decades to accept it and, who knows? Maybe I would have died too if I had stayed with her that day, but we'll never know because it never happened." The cold reality in his words shook her from within but it wasn't enough for the woman to mitigate the anger she still felt towards him. She stood up and extended one of her arms, reaching out for him. The man took her hand in his and stood up as well, not really sure about what was really going on.

Standing now face to face, the doctor swallowed hard as she let her arms rest at the sides of her body.

"Let's get this over with," she commanded, "this is what you wanted all along, after all." Her blue dress, still wet from the rain, was glued to her body, exposing each curve, each shape but also each scar, each torturing event she had had to endure throughout her years in the brothel. Alexandra reached for the thin straps on her shoulders and began peeling them off and letting them slide down her shoulders.

_It only took him a lighter and a coin._

"I'm not one of your clients," he said as his hands stopped her from taking off her dress, rejecting her.

"And still you paid like they always do," the doctor whispered as she laughed softly at him. "Why'd you do that for if you don't wanna sleep with me?" She reached for his torso and allowed her hands to romance his broad chest, yet the man removed her hands again, holding her by her wrists.

"I just wanted to give you a night of freedom. That's all."

"Freedom, you say. Freedom… Were you really that jealous of that poor boy, Black? You really can't see it, can you? This night, every other night, these red fingers marked on my cheek – it  _is_ your fault, whether you like it or not."

Feeling insulted by the simplicity of her accusations, Black let go of her wrists and moved away from her.

"I thought you wouldn't be working anymore, that is all. That's why I offered Rosario to pay for your exclusivity," he explained, although he was certain his words had been aimed for deaf ears. When she laughed at him he felt the despicable sounds of her venomous sense of humor traveling all across him, affirming his thoughts: no matter what he said to try and make her feel better, she would still blame him for everything she had had to endure all the same.

"Erron Black, the charitable one," she said, still unable to contain her laughter.

"You wouldn't even have to see me," Black stopped her. "If Rosario had said yes, I would have paid a monthly fee for you, ensuring your freedom – and you wouldn’t have to sleep with anyone unless you truly wanted to… I would have done that much for you." Even when he was trying hard to remain calm her scornful smile was getting under his skin. But suddenly the woman stopped laughing; the look in her eyes had been stained with the symptoms of an ancient, bottled up anguish she was clearly trying hard to fight back.

"You would have paid a monthly fee for me and that…" she paused, unable to hold back the tears any longer. "That sounds like freedom to you?"

Alexandra tried to stare into his eyes, but the cowboy looked down, as if ashamed, and shook his head in silence.

"No."

She nodded, wordlessly, as she wiped the tears still streaming down her face.

"I’m really sorry that you can't see – that  _I can't make you see_  everything I've done to protect you, Alex… But this is where I get off. We've been here before; we know how this story ends, it was stupid of me to try to get close to you again only to feel all those things you made me feel back then, over and over again. You make me weak; you test me endlessly…" He placed his hands at both sides of her shoulders and squeezed her lightly into his chest then he leaned in closer to kiss her forehead and the woman closed her eyes, feeling powerless and destined to relive that night in the mountains time and again with each one of his abandonments.

He let go from her and motioned towards the door.

"Is it because I'm older now?" Her voice suddenly sounded weak, almost broken. "I am older than your type, right?"

The mercenary shook his head pensively as he tried to brush off the obvious implications of her questions: of course, she was no fool. She could see that now their ages had been evened, leveled in a fake sense of shared maturity. He couldn't stay with that woman no matter how much he actually wanted to; their time had been severed, her existence in his life had been reduced to a simple, lackluster dot lost in a sea of endless dots. With a heavy heart, Black leaned his back against the door, still unable to look her in the eye. He knew that offering her a positive answer, an affirmation to her bitter question could be strong enough to kill her and yet, deep down, he was certain that her aging was not the only reason for him to let go.

"It's because you used to remind me of someone. But now, when I look at you, I can't find that person anymore."

A deep, solemn silence wrapped them up then. She stood still in the center of the room, her eyes unable to look away and abandon that man with his back still glued to the door. His mind, still debating whether to let her go for good or not, was a menacing voice he could not quite comprehend.

Fearing the definitive nature of their encounter, the doctor sat down on her bed; her hands were resting on her stomach: " _You're exactly like me but you have yet to see it_  – you told me that a long time ago, do you remember?"

He nodded.

"I am a doctor; you are a man that has all the time in the world and still neither of us had an option. You were right all along: we are the same damn thing."

Only then he raised his chin and allowed his eyes to find her.

"You  _had_ a choice," he said. "The census."

She clicked her tongue as she stood up again: "Come on, Black, don't…"

"What on earth makes a woman go from doctor to prostitute? You are a  _doctor_ , for fuck's sake!" He interrupted her. "Aalem would've never approved of this. Don't even try to…"

" _What on earth_? We're no longer on  _earth_ , sweetheart. And you don't get to use his name so freely," the doctor finally exploded. "You killed him – he could have been your son; there was a time when you even  _thought_  he was your son and still you murdered him like you didn't give a shit about him. You were judge, jury and executioner and a  _coward_  who couldn't even end the boy himself, so you had  _me_  pull the trigger for you… And now you dare patronize me? I am what I am because of you. I saved your life; the only thing you had to do was to get me to a fucking portal!" She stopped to catch her breath and take a good look at the man staring back at her with eyes full of disbelief: Black was petrified against the door yet she could see the rigid lines on his face growing darker by the second, his tense jawline, the veins in his neck becoming visible through his ancient skin and that breathing of his, hard and uneven, creating an unsettling pulse all around her. She had shaken the monster from within and now he was balancing his torment and his anger; she was finally making him face his own demons.

"All this lecture is because you resent me? Because I supposedly rejected you that night by the mountainside?" Black asked after a moment, spilling his poison all over her like a sinful viper trying to catch its prey. "Even if I hadn't abandoned you that night, nothing would have changed – you would have ended up alone all the same, you would have ended up repeating the same mistakes and throwing your life away by becoming a whore…"

She raised her hand but froze in place, unable to connect her palm with his face. The disgusted look in her eyes was dissecting that man into tiny, countless shards of an already fragmented existence. She approached him, still disturbed by his words but ready to do anything in her power to prove him wrong: yes, that night his rejection had shattered her into a million pieces and even long after that night, when she found out that he was a married man, she had felt his vicious eyes killing her all over again - but it wasn't enough to conceal the fact that he had been nothing but a cruel, selfish man all along. The truth was evident: had he helped her get back home when it still mattered, that night by the mountainside would have never existed.

"You say I remind you of someone, but you remind me of someone too. Your eyes… your eyes are just like his. There's something about your jaw when you get tense… Or the way you pace around the room when you don't know what to say… but I've always known you are not him. That night, when I tried to kiss you, I wanted to kiss  _you_ ; I wasn't trying to kiss him. And I thought that, maybe, for a moment, that was what you wanted, I thought maybe you wanted it too; maybe you needed it as much as I needed it." She moved closer and trapped his body against the door and the man looked sideways, nervously. "Do you think you'll ever be ready to stand in front of me and not see a whore?"

The honesty in her question pained him. Deeply.

"Because every time I look at you, I see a man that has lived a ridiculously long life and I can see things too,” the doctor added. “A man that's lived for so long, Black… I wonder just how many women you've slept with all over the years. How many, Black? How many? Is the number really that small that it makes you feel entitled to judge me?"

"I'm not judging you," he tried to defend himself.

"That's all you've ever done since you found me here," she said as she brushed his lips with the tip of her fingers, "and you still haven't answered my question."

"Too many," Black confessed, almost whispering the words.

"And how many of them slept with you for  _you_ , because they actually liked  _you_ , because they actually wanted to be with  _you_? How many of them slept with you for reasons that had nothing to do with fear or power?"

He looked down, unable to answer.

"We are the same thing, Black. You were right all along." Forehead against forehead, the tip of her nose landed on the tip of his nose. "Then why do I have to be the one you reject?"

He opened his eyes and looked down instinctively. The woman moved closer, pushing his body back against the wall.

"I could be your great, great, great, great grandfather," The gunslinger managed to say; the last bastions of a poorly constructed defense finally collapsing all around him.

"But you're not."

Coldness in her eyes, romance in her body language. That incredibly austere and soft element in her voice that had captivated him only moments ago was gone: that woman used to fear him, but now she was staring back at him as if she held some sort of power over him; as if she had transformed him into one of her disposable clients.

"Back off, Alex."

"I will… As soon as you tell me  _why_. Why did you say _no_ to me? The word, does it make you feel empowered, does it make you feel superior, or was it just the thrill of watching someone struggle and suffer for no reason? Why, Black? Why did you keep me there? What for? There was no mission at all, at least not in that cabin."

" _Sanctuary_. I was protecting you – you and Aalem,” he confessed.

"But what about the woman in the mountains? You _were_  hurt when we met."

"Kano,” Black explained, “a man named Kano was the one who hurt me."

"But I saw Aalem's notes – he wrote _sighting_ , Black, what the hell did he see?"

"I don't know," Black whispered. "I didn't want him to grow up in the Palace so I took him with me to the cabin, and I told him stories about this deadly spirit embodied by a woman – I told him she was a demon, traveling from realm to realm and bringing chaos and death. He was so innocent…"

The man was hurt, and his pain was contagious. As soon as she noticed his eyes drifting away from the real her and focusing on the woman in the mirror, she shifted inside his arms and looked at her own reflection. As her lips moved, it was as if that other woman was the one talking to him, the one still trying to get to him.

"I've only ever wanted one thing from you, Black: a portal to take me back home; I never wanted your protection, your company… I never even asked for any of those things. As you can see, I survived a whole decade without you."

"And like you say, you haven't exactly lived those years, you merely survived them," Black answered softly, his eyes still unable to abandon that woman in the mirror.

"We both did," the doctor caressed his neck and allowed her hands to move up and reach the sides of his face, her eyes summoning his, finally bringing him back to reality. "Would it have been easier? To just sleep with you back then, give you what you wanted?" She asked as she rested her forehead against his chest.

"No."

The mercenary tried to put his arms around her, but his body felt so heavy now, as if having her body against his was the only thing preventing him from simply crumbling down to the ground. With her face still hidden in his chest, the doctor took a deep breath and finally gathered the courage to ask him: "There's something I have always wanted to ask you: what does it take for a man to become someone like you?"

The pause was long, meaningful.

"A lot, really."

She looked up, her eyes finding his. He looked tired, almost as if ready to give up.

"Time was always by your side, you could have been anything you wanted..."

He wasn't used to that kind of fighting – the emotional kind; the sincere kind, and it was clear that the battle was finally taking its toll on him. He spoke softly, the tone of his voice reduced to a mere lullaby: "By the time I became truly free to choose, it was too late. I was too old to change; killing for money was the only thing I knew how to do. And I was good at it."

"You were an old man in a very young body, that's no excuse." Even when she was trying hard not to sound harsh, a part of him ignited again with her words but the ignition was short-lived; his fire was nearly extinct.

"Do you have an idea of how fast society changes? Do you have an idea of how small is the window of opportunity for you to actually adapt to those changes? You may not notice it, but the perspective of time is truly a relentless thing to try to keep up with." The mercenary placed both of his hands on her hips as he finally let his body fall to the ground, flexing his knees for the woman to sit on his lap. "The changes are subtle, but they are always definitive. And you keep thinking that someday, things will go back to normal, but they never do. One day you wake up an old man in a brand-new world that does not belong to you anymore. I  _am_  adaptable but adapting is hard… It takes time; it's a very demanding activity. Now cowboys may be extinct, _real_  cowboys, that is. But mercenaries… mercenaries are always needed," he paused and looked at her – her eyes were big and blue: she was listening. For the very first time, she was actually listening to him. "Same goes for prostitutes, I guess."

She smiled, finally.

"When you said I reminded you of someone, was it the nurse on the picture or the one that should have been your wife?"

"Bit o' both," he said, unable to conceal his surprise: even after all those years, she still remembered. The doctor shifted in his arms as she let her temple rest against his shoulder then she closed her eyes again, feeling exhausted. It took all of his strength to ask her the only thing he still needed to know. "Why didn't you join the census?"

The woman furrowed her brow, yet she understood it was time to open up.

"I didn't know if it was safe for me to do so,” she said. “It might be ancient history now, but the moment you helped me out of that cell, I became a fugitive. I feared, and not just about my safety." She took a deep breath before she continued but she looked away; she couldn't afford to face him now. "I feared what I could find on the other side. My parents… Nathan… You had distracted me for so long that there were times when I completely forgot about them – and I felt guilty for that, I blamed you for that, I hated you for that… I chickened out. Just to think about the fact that my parents were old before I came here, just to think about that maybe they weren't around anymore and Nathan… that man loved me but no man can wait for so long, no man can search for so long without giving up so I thought:  _what if he moved on? Can I blame him for that? No, no, I can't_."

He held her in his arms as tears fell down her face. The fear that had stopped her back then had been the same fear he had felt so long ago, when he decided to abandon Annie and look for Amanda. In the end, he had lost everything.

"There's no going back home for me now, Black. Not anymore," she sentenced. "And I thought about you too, I thought about all the things you would have been forced to explain if they found me trying to escape. I don't know why I was so loyal to you back then, you never really did anything to deserve that loyalty… yes, you fed me, and you provided me with a roof above my head but thinking back, truth is you were a complete asshole ninety-nine percent of the time," she chuckled, then sighed, ready to come clean: "I feared  _you_  – the possibility of missing you, that is. As crazy as it may sound there's  _something_ here – always has been. I know it; you know it. I don't know if it was born out of necessity or not, but I guess that's not the point anymore."

The mercenary ran his fingers through her black hair and smiled.

"It's a good thing you didn't step up during the census, though – I killed you in my story," he explained, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. "During the trial, that bastard tried to incriminate you, but I told them you had died in the fire to make sure no-one would try to track you down."

Something clicked inside of her; much like an epiphany – the consummation of a memory that never actually happened. The doctor guided his chin downwards, forcing the gunslinger to look her in the eyes: "So you actually did it then, even if it was only fictitious… you actually found the courage you lacked that night, the night you pulled the trigger, remember?"

He remembered. He remembered vividly.

The ex-Earthrealm cowboy stood up and walked up to her bed where he picked up his previously discarded hat. He ran his fingers through the many bullets adorning the garment until he stopped and pulled one out. He looked over his shoulder and ordered the woman to join him with a swift movement of his right hand. As she stood right next to him, he placed the chosen bullet in the palm of her hand and created a fist with her fingers, using his own.

"The bullet I fired at you… it was a warning, I never meant to hurt you.  _This_ is your bullet. That night… you were never in danger," he confessed as he removed his hand. The object weighed heavily on her palm – he had carved her name on it,  _Alexandra_.

"But the shock… it was real. And you wounded me," she said, confused.

"Because you moved. I only kill for two reasons: money, and self-defense. You never attacked me, and no one ever paid me to kill you."

"But what if someone did? What if someone paid you to kill me?" She asked.

"Then it wouldn't be personal," Black said before laughing again; the sound of his laughter made her breathe once more: he was joking. "I just handed you a bullet with your name on it;  _your_  bullet. Need I say more?"

She clicked her tongue and moved her fist up and down, balancing the weight of the bullet.

"That day in the cell, when you said you'd kill me to spare me the shame of a public execution – you were bluffing then?" The doctor asked as she sat down on the bed, her eyes unable to abandon that projectile still resting on the palm of her hand.

"I needed you to talk, I was hoping for a juicy story; I never expected you would turn out to be just a frightened girl that just wanted to go back home," Black explained simply as he sat down next to her. "If anything, I must say, that was actually rather endearing."

She stared into his eyes, quieting a million questions. The man wrapped her hand in his, the bullet disappeared from her sight yet the weight of what it actually represented was something she just couldn't overlook.

"Why are you giving me this now, Black?"

"It's a reminder,” he said, “of who I am. Don't try to change me, I am who I am, I'm not looking for redemption."

"I know," The doctor whispered then she stood up and placed the bullet in one of the drawers of her wardrobe, inside the little box containing her jewelry. Black observed her in silence as she left the room only to return a few minutes later, carrying two glasses of wine in one hand and an open bottle in the other. She set the bottle on the floor and handed him one of the glasses, smiling fondly at that man now practically lying on her bed. They both drank in silence, then she picked up the bottle in order to refill his glass, but he refused, placing the now-empty glass on her bedside table.

"This is when you say you're sorry and we patch things up," the doctor said as she finished her wine. The mercenary rested his head on her pillow, yet he couldn't close his eyes.

"I  _am_  sorry, Alex – but I just don't feel guilty. I don't feel responsible."

He held her hand in his as she sat down on the bed. She nodded in silence before placing her glass right next to his.

"When I said you needed to get some real sleep, I wasn't just trying to tell you off. I meant that, Black. You've been working nonstop for weeks now; you could really use a good night's rest." The tone of her voice was definitely more amicable now – finally showing the real her, the version of her that had reminded him of Amanda in the first place. The mercenary closed his eyes as he felt the weight of her fingers intertwined with his; finally able to acknowledge the specific weight of her whole being. He opened his eyes again to discover the woman still sitting on the bed, watching him. He knew there was a certain emptiness in beauty when used as an end and not as a means to an end and yet now, in the dead of night and tenderly rocked by the rain and the wind, after the calm and the storm, he was able to see past that sacrosanct yet adulterated beauty of hers. Their points of view and opinions about everything they had been through together had yet to be reconciled but at least, it was a beginning. At least that awkwardness that had ruled their past encounters wasn't there anymore.

When she looked over her shoulder, he was already sleeping. She removed her hand, trying hard not to wake him up then she walked up to the balcony, and placed her hands on the railing once again; the cold rain instantly washing over her face began to feel balsamic, even soothing for her senses. She went to her bathroom and took a bath, then she lit up a cigar as she picked her old, long black t-shirt.

She climbed to bed and rested her body beside his; her free hand running through the single stripe of hair adorning his head.

The man opened his eyes. Those big, coffee-eyed eyes she liked so much.

"I'm not meant to be caged, Black," the lump in her throat was evident; her voice was revealing a sadness that she clearly couldn't get rid of, "not even inside your box of memories." She stood up and tried to compose herself wiping her tears and moving near the balcony. The wind was blowing harder now; the heat that had enveloped the city was finally subsiding.

"We'll find a way," Black tried to sound reassuring. He sat on her bed but stayed there, giving her space.

"To do what, exactly?" She questioned him, trying hard not to start a war again. "Just how many times do you think I can start over? There's no new beginning for me, Erron. There's no clean slate."

Only then, when he sensed her giving up on everything she had fought for, he stood up and wrapped his arms around her. The woman moved away from him, as if ashamed to expose her private defeat.

"I know, but maybe you'll find something that'll make you feel better," he said. "Just like I did. Working here reminded me of my own past, of things I had forgotten a long time ago. It was brief, and I blew it – but I enjoyed it while it lasted nonetheless."

The woman turned around and shook her head – the bitterness written all over her face was still there. She caressed his cheeks, biting her lower lip as an attempt to hold back those words she could not let out.

"What?" Black demanded.

The woman sighed.

"Sometimes I wonder why you are still alive, what's _keeping_  you alive," she finally said. "All you do is reminisce, and wish for things and people that are long gone." He opened his mouth, but the doctor silenced him by placing her index finger on his lips. "All you do is mix your past with this obnoxious present – but this is not your time, and this brothel is not the saloon you grew up in… The woman I remind you of, I'm not her, just like you're not Nathan. You might have his eyes, but I don't see him when I look at you and that's dangerous. You're dangerous. You're like a time blender that confuses me, and distracts me, and makes me believe that I'm that woman from your past when I know, when I'm sure I'm not her because at times I'm not even myself anymore; I just don't feel like myself anymore and that makes you dangerous, Black, you're far more dangerous than your weapons and your skills combined –  _you are the danger_."

Black stepped away from her, broken by her words.

"Black, you are the one who tries to murder me in my sleep and kiss me only moments later and that's all you'll ever be, that is all you  _should_  be – but you're not, because you're constantly trying to find someone in me that's not here and you make me believe that I can find someone else inside of you; someone I know, someone I loved, someone I lost… But it's just  _us_ , Erron."

In his mind, the memory of his own dream resurfaced and made him remember everything about that feeling, the one he had experienced so long ago: those transfixed faces, subjugated by his particular type of love: who was he making love to? Amanda? Alexandra? Were they truly interchangeable? His need had blurred the frontier separating those bodies but only now he could finally understand why: he wasn't trying to merge those women, he was only trying to merge the man he had been with the one he was now, the man who couldn't age – the man who couldn't love a simple mortal.

Abashed and confused, the cowboy moved farther and farther away from the doctor.

"Don't shut me out now, Erron," Alexandra whispered, trying her best to reach out for him. "Not when we're alone." She watched him in silence as he sat on her bed, his shoulders stooped forward, as if the weight of the world was pushing them down.

"I'm sorry," Black mumbled after a while. Fallen eyelids, broken voice. "I should have taken you home. You're right; none of this would have happened if I had just taken you home. But I didn't want to take you home – at first because I thought you were hiding something but then when I found out you were just a frightened girl it was too late: Amanda was already there, and Annie." He opened his eyes to find her kneeling in front of him. "And then the fire and those other memories – the ones I didn't want to remember. Letting you go was one of the hardest things I've done but I  _had_  to. You were changing me; I couldn't allow that to happen. Then it was the trial, then prison… you know the story, everybody does. And then you again…" The doctor placed her hands on his knees, stretching her back. "I can't see her in your eyes when I look at you now; you've changed – but even so, I'm still here."

As she reached out for him, the soldiers that were coming out of the rooms across the courtyard leaned on the railings and looked in their direction – the open curtains revealed a scene that had nothing to do with the actual events taking place inside the doctor's room: she was kneeling down in front of him, his broad shoulders were now thrown back.

"You still up, Black?" One of them yelled carelessly. The mercenary cursed under his breath but signaled the doctor to stay right where she was, where they couldn't see her. "Time to go, Black,  _we're on duty_ ," the other soldier added mockingly, unable to contain his laughter any longer. Black looked over his shoulder and waited until they were gone. Only then he stood up, placing his hands at the sides of the doctor's shoulders for her to get up as well.

"I paid for the whole night," he mumbled apologetically. "You don't need to worry about going back out there, still a few hours till dawn." As he began to pick up his hat, his guns, and his bandolier, the woman glued her back to the nearest wall and grinned softly at him.

"At first I had a different role here – a role that had nothing to do with the sexual activity."

"But then what? It grew on you?" Black let out, puzzled by her revelation and causing the woman to shake her head disapprovingly.

"Sorry," he said.

"I came here thinking it was just a bar, just another canteen," she clarified.

"It's called  _The House of Pleasure_  for a reason, honey."

"Yeah, I noticed," Alexandra whispered. "And when I noticed, I did the only thing I could: I bargained my stay. The girls were in pretty bad shape so my services as a doctor were really appreciated. I stayed with them, did some research, helped them get better and Rosario let me live here, in exchange."

"Oh, healthy whores. Thank you." Black inclined his head in reverence.

"Anyway, I did a pretty good job, you know?"

The gunslinger put on his hat and walked up to her before she could go on.

"Let me guess: you did such a wonderful job that they didn't need you anymore."

The doctor nodded her head in silence.

"Classic Rosario…" Black laughed.

"So, she made me choose: I could go, but I had nowhere to go and no money – or I could stay."

"And work for her," Black finished for her. "Rosario told me about everything you've done for this place. It's remarkable, really." He cupped her face with his hands.

"Did she tell you why I did those things?" Her expression darkened yet the mercenary took a deep breath a placed a soft kiss on her forehead.

"I lost a kid, too."

She shook her head; the feeling of having his hands on her face was burning against her skin.

"It's not the same. You didn't know."

His arms enveloped her tightly, quickly molding her shape against his chest. The woman let go after a few seconds, grinning tenderly at him while fighting back the tears. She walked him to the door and opened it - the last symptoms of the carnival were still marching down the corridor; still drunk, and still happy.

He leaned against the doorframe,

"I did not reject you that night," Black confessed. "I kissed you back, under the mask." Taken aback, the doctor tilted her head back, visibly stunned by his unexpected revelation. "I'm not wearing a mask now, Alexandra. Why don’t you finish what you started?"

As she wrapped her hands around his neck, his parted lips welcomed her long-awaited presence in his mouth. Pinning her waist back against the door, the mercenary let his hands roam the sides of her body, exploring a territory that didn't feel hostile for the very first time. Her tongue danced with his tongue in a ballet that was not polluted by the skills of professionalism – soothing and tender, forehead against forehead; her hands on his chest, tugging at his jacket and pulling him closer. When the doctor broke the kiss to catch her breath, the shadow standing behind Black and growing darker by the second appeared barely in her peripheral vision but the woman paid no mind as the gunslinger leaned in and rested his lips on the tip of her nose.

El-A's voice broke the spell – she had seen them.

She had heard them.

"Funny, I thought you hated him…" The girl began, "But then again, maybe every single thing we thought we knew about you is wrong; beginning with  _who you are_. Right,  _Alexandra_?"


	39. State your Business

Arc IV

Chapter XXXIX

**State your Business**

* * *

 " _What he wants, what he needs, what he fears... the depths of it... they are profound and dark. […] I've descended into those depths and connected with him […]. But I am acutely aware that I'm not the first to have been there... to have been a partner to him in this way. And that the ones that have seen those depths before... they never surfaced again."_

Black Sails ― S03E06

* * *

There was always something whimsical about the end of the carnival. A certain sadness, tarnished by the nostalgia of knowing that now, it would take a whole new year for them to be able to experience such a night again. A certain exhaustion, visible through the still-present effects of the alcohol and the excesses they had enjoyed the night before. Dark clouds surrounding their eyes and the rain… the incessant rain, still falling and washing the heat away from streets that have seen too much.

That very same rain they had been waiting for so long now, like a blind man's prayer waiting to see the fatuous, flashing lights during the night, was now being perceived in a completely different way.

The initial relief had subsided rather quickly, succumbing to the sad realization that now, the silver curtain pouring from the heavens above was simply an annoyance; a vague excuse forcing everyone to stay indoors with their families.

The litter still polluting the streets, the many insects assaulting the leftovers from the night before and the canopy of dark clouds threatening the whole city were all somber thoughts swimming in Rosario's head. The old Peruvian woman was sitting on the front porch, her back leaned against the doorframe.

"So I told her: you said so many bad things about him and now  _this_  – you must be truly desperate to share a bed with this man without throwing up all over the place…"

Inside the brothel, El-A was still going on about the events of the previous night. A small group of young girls had gathered around her, eager to listen to the latest round of gossip.

"What can I tell you, my friends? She seemed so classy before… guess she is what she is,  _Earthrealm scum,_  trust me, there's just nothing more to that woman. And the worst part is we don't even know who she really is."

"She seemed so classy, you say, El-A – but she ended up being his whore anyways," Fá was helping her friend spark the fire inside the rest of the group; the seed of discord had been finally planted.

"And then what happened?" One of the younger girls asked, longing to hear more.

"Then…" El-A paused briefly, looking for effect and drama, "then I broke free from her grip – did I mention she was holding me by my forearm, her eyes so vicious and cold I really feared for my life? So I broke free, and just like Fá said, I told her that she was his whore… she looked me in the eye and said: ' _Yes, I am his whore, but such activities are bound to remain in the privacy of our bedchamber_.' The nerve… Can you believe this woman?"

" _Our_ bedchamber?" The girls asked in unison, completely shocked by El-A's version of the story.

Exhaling loudly, and still sitting on the front porch, Rosario stretched one of her arms and closed the door behind her, leaving the girls alone with their fantasies. In less than twelve hours she had heard El-A telling the same story over and over again; the details getting more and more exaggerated every time. Placing her cold hands on her knees, the manager of the House of Pleasure observed the doctor out in the street, picking up the many empty bottles still resting at the sides of the road. The woman hadn't said a word since the incident; the dark and soulless vacuum in her eyes was speaking about an extinguished fire: that woman didn't want to fight El-A, she didn't even have the strength to deny the versions revolving all around her.

"In spite of the rain, I say today's a good day for shopping," Rosario said softly, without even looking at her friend.

"What do you need to buy?" With a completely colorless voice, the doctor replied skeptically. Her hands and her eyes still busy with the bottles discarded all around her.

"Silk and different fabrics."

"What for?" Alexandra questioned, finally walking towards the old lady.

"I hate talking shit about one of my own, but that little bitch is getting problematic. And with everyone still recovering from the carnival and the rain, it could take days for our customers to come back – until that happens, the only activity that’s left for them to do is talk, and talk and  _talk_ and then, talk some more." The doctor stretched one of her hands for Rosario to stand up. "Now I don't know what the hell happened last night, but I'm not buying her story. Our only problem is that those girls clearly are." She looked over her shoulder and watched them all gathered inside: El-A was still the center of attraction, her story had captivated every single one of the girls and now they were all there, right next to her, listening to her endless stories. "The wine, the rain, and the endless vomiting ruined many skirts and dresses last night; I want to give them something to do to pass the time – maybe sewing some new dresses will keep their mouths shut."

"Sounds like wishful thinking to me, unless you're planning on sewing their lips together," the doctor spat coldly with her hands at the sides of her waist and a scornful smile adorning her darkened features.

"Don't give me any ideas…"

They started to walk in the rain, their heads and shoulders covered by their long, black capes. The city was empty; those streets were still recovering from the sights they had seen the night before.

"I doubt we're going to find any merchants in the Marketplace with this rain…" the doctor whispered as they crossed the street.

"We're not going to the Marketplace, dear," The Peruvian manager replied simply, "this is something you need to learn: whenever you need supplies for the House of Pleasure, whatever kind of supply you may need, never go to the Marketplace – go straight for the merchants."

"Why?" Alexandra asked, mildly curious.

"No taxes."

In the late hours of the evening, Rosario's lesson ricocheted through the quiet houses breathing life into the stony neighborhood. Windows closed and doors locked, the sleepy residents had created a ghost town for them to explore on their own.

"We shouldn't take long," Alexandra said, "who knows the things she'll tell them while we're gone."

Rosario smiled disdainfully, a bitter gesture taking over her old features: "She's gonna tell them what she wants anyway – whether we're there to listen to it or not is purely anecdotic by now."

The doctor stopped and grabbed her friend by the shoulder.

"Do you want to talk about what really happened last night?" She offered genuinely, but Rosario shook her head in silence and resumed her march, leaving her friend behind momentarily. When Alex caught up to her, the dull, lackluster bitterness written all over Rosario's face sent shivers down her spine: Rosario was reaching the end of her tether, she was getting tired of their games and intrigues – and it was obvious that their many overlapping plots were tarnishing their friendship.

"Not now," Rosario whispered, patting Alex's shoulder.

The transaction went smoothly as expected: they had acquired seven different types of fabric and four different colors of silk – burgundy, purple, blue and black and the tax-free, final price had been way cheaper than what the doctor had in mind. Shaking the merchant's hand, Rosario arranged the last details of their purchase by making sure the items would be delivered to The House of Pleasure first thing in the morning. As they left the merchant's place the doctor grinned, satisfied: she had always hated the Marketplace.

She had never been fond of crowded places so learning that she would never have to visit the Marketplace in order to buy supplies for The House of Pleasure was reassuring, especially now that they had moved the stalls to the Kobe as an attempt to settle the commercial district around a whole new area after the first attack that had successfully destroyed the original Marketplace. The place where the original Marketplace had been was now a memorial monument, embodied by the shape of a large statue of the emperor himself, surrounded by the agonizing victims kissing their lives goodbye at his feet. Many merchants had complained about moving their stalls to the Kobe, adducing that the odor and the pollution of the zone could be potentially dangerous to the goods they were trying to sell – but the Palace went ahead and made it official anyway, forcing them to settle around the entrance of the docks and luring them with promises about a better future; a better future they were still waiting for.

"What?" Rosario asked, noticing the doctor smiling.

"Nothing, it's just… thanks for the advice," she said timidly. "You know how I hate the Marketplace, so…"

"I didn't do it for you, I did it for The House of Pleasure. Like I said, and you saw with your own eyes: no taxes," Rosario replied coldly.

"Yes, but anyway… the fact that you trusted me with this secret means you still have faith in me," Alex clarified, "that means a lot to me; means you still want me as your successor."

"Don't push your luck, kid."

Noticing her friend's hardened expression, the doctor chose to remain silent from that point on. Guided by Rosario's steps, the younger woman followed her friend through the now nocturnal streets until she realized they weren't making their way back to the brothel: they were walking East now, approaching a part of the neighborhood the doctor had never seen before.

"What do we need to buy now?" Alexandra asked, worried.

"Nothing."

"But the brothel's that way," the doctor insisted, her index finger pointing Southwest.

"I know."

The buildings were lower now and the lights in the streets were dim and gloomy. The urban planning for that part of the city looked just like a maze composed by narrower alleys and vaulted rooftops they couldn't even use as decoys to pinpoint their exact, current location. Worried and scared, the doctor stopped and thought about turning around and going back to the brothel, but night had already wrapped them up in its obsidian blanket and she had no idea where she was. She looked over her shoulder only to find Rosario still marching ahead, unperturbed; her pace determined yet calm. The doctor hurried her steps and held her friend by the elbow, forcing the older woman to turn around and look at her but the second she did so, both women noticed a diversity of dark silhouettes lurking around every corner. The sounds of their renewed footsteps in the rain were the only sounds left in the night as those eyes pried on them; their blurry shapes venturing that dark, godforsaken alley.

Rosario searched through the creases of her cape until she found a handful of silver coins. Nodding silently in front of the doctor and indicating her friend to remain quiet, the old, Peruvian lady threw her coins one by one until the cold palm of her hand was empty – the silhouettes came to light then, crouching their way around them like wounded animals. The homeless beggars collected the coins in silence as the doctor stood petrified in the middle of the narrow path but while many of them disappeared from her sight in the blink of an eye, others chose to be persistent, mesmerized by the shape and the perfume of a woman. Trembling, Alexandra closed her eyes the second she felt those filthy hands traveling near her ankles and moving up her calves. Rosario's walking stick shooed them away rather easily, causing those last remaining beggars to run away from them.

Taking a moment to catch her breath, the doctor braced herself before Rosario indicated her it was time for them to keep going. A couple of blocks ahead, the manager of the House of Pleasure stopped and walked through a thin green curtain that was clearly acting as a front door. A short, windowless corridor received them then, with two doors at the right and only one door at the left. There were many leaks in the roof; the dirty raindrops falling all around them were now mixed with the rust emanating from the damaged pipes visible through the fragile ceiling above them.

With her eyes too busy staring at the amber-colored drops falling from the roof, the doctor bumped into a man standing all alone in a corner, facing the wall in front of him with one of his hands glued to the naked structure. The middle-aged man cursed under his breath as the doctor apologized, noticing with gruesome repulsion what it was that he was doing: he was peeing the wall. Disgusted and shocked, Alexandra hurried her pace and quickly left the man behind – Rosario was already standing in front of the last door, knocking gently.

A confused Erron Black met them at the other side of the door.

"Ros, what are you…?" He began, but the words in his tongue stopped the second he noticed the doctor approaching. "What's going on?"

Using her walking stick to make room for her to come inside his  _house_ , the manager of The House of Pleasure made her way through the small, untidy room and turned around.

"Time for a social visit, Erron; it was long overdue, anyway. Sorry, we came uninvited."

The mercenary, still standing by the door, extended his hand for the doctor to come inside his house and the woman took it, her pace slow and cautious. Black closed the door and moved away from Alexandra, silently evaluating her reactions: she was pacing around the room now, looking defeated and somewhat frustrated by the poor conditions of the place where he lived now. There was just one old, creaking cot placed against one of the walls, and a lonely wooden chair resting right next to it. At the other side of the room there were two white basins on the floor – a small one and a medium-sized one; behind them, and with barely enough space to serve its purpose, the filthy latrine completed the picture. Alexandra looked over her shoulder, making an ulterior effort not to seem nosy or disgusted by her surroundings – it had been so hard for them to open up to each other she didn't want to risk it all by filling her eyes with pity for a man who had once enjoyed the honeyed zeniths of life in the Royal Palace.

"It's Ok," Black tried to comfort her. "It's not as bad as it looks," he said as he placed his arms around her shoulders and motioned her towards the cot, indicating the doctor to sit down. Rosario was already sitting on the precarious bed, her walking stick resting against the wall.

"So, judging by the look on your face, I take it you've never been here before…" The Peruvian lady broke the uncomfortable silence. "Good. I needed to make sure we were on the same page." Alexandra opened her mouth to protest but Rosario went on: "When El-A came to me and told me all about the events of last night, I told her it was just a pet name. But when she didn't find an ally in me, she went on, and began telling the story – the slightly exaggerated version of the story, that is – to the rest of the girls. She's trying to form an alliance; it doesn't take a scientist to know it: that little bitch is gathering supporters from the inside…"

"I still don't understand what is it that we're trying to do here," the doctor finally spoke up.

"I’m merely trying to connect the dots, dear,” Rosario offered, “I told El-A it was just a pet name, and make no mistake: a part of me wants that to be true but I'm not twelve anymore and I don't believe in fairy tales: this man cried for you, he told me you were the daughter of an old friend of his - but we all know that’s not true. Something  _is_  good, though: I brought you here on purpose, I needed to see your reactions and boy, are they clear enough to me. He can't stand the stupor in your eyes; he doesn't want you to see this shithole where he lives in now… and you're dying to throw your arms around him and tell him everything's going to be alright because you didn't know about any of this, you had no clue that this pathetic room is the only thing that's left of the great, the fearsome Erron Black. This means you've never been here before; this means your interactions with this man only took place inside the brothel and that, my child, means that you haven't been plotting behind my back."

Black curled his hands into tight fists, but the doctor leaned forward, cupping his hands with her own.

"We need to tell her, Alex," he whispered, defeated.

The doctor shook her head, but it was too late: the cowboy opened up and spilled all their secrets, finally sharing the story of how a mercenary that can't age came to meet a doctor named Alexandra Flynn. Rosario listened carefully as the entire intrigue of their bond impregnated the whole room, leaving her breathless and completely speechless.

"Maybe I should just disappear for a couple of days," the doctor suggested, noticing Rosario's saddened expression. Her friend's insufferable silence was taking its toll on her:  Black was right, she should have trusted Rosario all along; the woman was the closest thing she had to a mother after all and she had lied to her face, she had let her down.

"Only those who got somethin' to hide disappear," Black replied calmly, his eyes never leaving Rosario's.

It took her a moment to find her own voice inside the convoluted mess of mixed emotions boiling up inside her chest. The old, Peruvian woman was hurt – her friend had hurt her, and now the scar was there, damaging her emotions and tearing up her heart. She had chosen Alex to be her successor – she had offered that woman her friendship, her motherly guidance for the doctor to bloom after so much suffering; she had defended her, protected her, trusted her… It wasn't that the doctor's secrets were so terrible that she felt she was being forced to meet a brand new person but still she felt betrayed by her nonetheless, in the most intimate redoubts of her soul.

"El-A has plucked up her courage," Rosario finally said, her voice tentative, as if searching somewhere deep inside her soul for strength, "she knows with absolute certainty that the members of El Club want her as my successor, and the fact that Black attacked her when we found out about the missing wine is only going to become beneficial for her in the long run." The old woman looked up, then she let her eyes find the doctor who was staring right back at her. "When I ushered you both upstairs last night, they mentioned it. They said they didn't want Black anywhere near the brothel, especially now that El-A had been attacked by him. We need to make sure the only thing she heard last night was your name, Dakota…" she paused, visibly moved, "I mean, Alexandra… if the only thing she's got on you is a name, then we'll be alright, but if she heard more than that, if she heard something else, something other than your name, then we'll be in trouble."

It took all her strength, but the doctor took a deep breath, and finally asked: "You still want me as your successor?"

"Yes, but not because you deserve it." Brokenhearted, Rosario was letting her pain do the talking. "Because I can't let them win; and with El-A in charge, nothing will stop them."

The doctor looked away, welcoming Rosario's pain as her own. After a brief moment, she stood up, composing herself.

"Maybe we should accept Erron's offer, then. Maybe exclusivity is not such a bad idea," the doctor said, causing both Rosario and Black to look at her with incredulous eyes.

"I don't agree," the manager spoke up. "Personally, it leaves you vulnerable to the whims of just one man. Economically, it's a giant loss."

"Then consider it an investment," the doctor argued, "we could use my working hours for you to teach me everything about the House of Pleasure, the syndicate, the business… use that spare time to train me, to make sure I'll be able to become a good successor when the time comes."

"I like that…" Rosario said, surprised. "But the exposure… the things they would say about you and him; they don't want him, he's not welcome."

"Then she can come over," Black suggested. "If I'm not welcome there, then she can come over here. I know it's not much, but…"

Rosario scratched her chin and shook her head: "That would raise suspicions."

"Maybe, but we can make them see that if I focus all my energy into _pleasing_ this man, I can _distract_ him – I can keep him at bay," the doctor offered. "Ain't that what the syndicate wants, after all? To keep him at bay?"

"But the syndicate doesn't want my successor anywhere near him," Rosario said, trying to talk some sense into them. "I would assume that, by now, El-A's already told her boyfriend about last night. If the boyfriend knows, then every member of El Club knows."

"It could be my sacrifice," Alexandra placed her hands on Black's shoulders and squeezed. "We could tell them that we want him near so we can distract him; you can tell them that, as your successor, I'm willing to sacrifice myself in order to ensure the future of the syndicate – that he can have me if that's what he wants. We can trade information, make sure the garrisons will not interfere. I'll drive him away from them; I myself will be the distraction. Ain't that what a true successor would do to protect her business?"

Black nodded in silence, intertwining his fingers with the doctor’s and Rosario sighed helplessly, realizing that her strategy had backfired: she had only wanted to see their faces and their reactions to make sure there were no secret plots going on behind her back, yet she had brought them together, she had united them into one solid strategy.

"I'll think about it," she said as she stood up and made her way to the door. She leaned her back against it, her hands resting at the sides of her body. The doctor motioned towards the manager, but Rosario signaled the woman to stay right where she was.

The look in her eyes had changed – she seemed vulnerable; she was no longer the Queen of the Oppressed.

"I already talked to you separately, but now that you're… together, maybe my message will finally get through to you," she began; her voice lifeless, unfeeling. "I have asked you many times to take good care of her, Erron, but I don't need you to protect her from  _them_ ; I only need you to protect her from  _you_. And when I said that he couldn't wait for you I wasn't talking about the end of this fucking conflict, I was talking about this…" her hands traveled up and down the sides of her decaying body, only stopping to draw invisible circles around her face. "What you see before you is the manifestation of a future that will catch up to you. This old woman trying to talk some sense into you is simply the talking version of the future woman you'll become, in time." Colors breathing life into her vocal cords, her voice was now a conduit for a tourbillion of emotions to find release. "This old woman, juggling power and adversaries, is the one you shall become. But he – the man you see now,  _as you see him now_ , he won't change a bit, dear. But you will. You will be the only one aging. It's terribly cruel, trust me – to watch each wrinkle appear and modify your face, your entire body… He'll notice those wrinkles too, and the way he looks at you now, the way he perceives you now – that is going to change as well."

The mercenary looked down, his hands holding on to the doctor.

"The passionate desire you see now will be gone then; replaced by pity and, every once in awhile, disdain,” Rosario remembered. “You'll lose it. Trust me, girl, you will. He'll start slipping through your fingers just like water and you won't be able to stop him anymore, not with hands so weak. You'll wait in vain for visits that are only going to become less and less usual until one day, he won't be back at all. He's gonna find someone younger; someone who can remind him of the precious value of a youth that refuses to leave him and yes, he'll toy with the idea of idolized love once again, for a while, until she starts aging too. I won't tell you what to do, girl – I can't; you're not my daughter. Just know that this is what will happen; because this  _will_  happen – whether you like it or not,” the manager sentenced. “Just know that, when the time comes, he's gonna leave you behind because watching you age and wither and die is gonna break his heart. He won't be with you in the end, he won't hold your hand because it hurts… and he'll be right: it does hurt, dear. It really does."

As Rosario left Black's place, the doctor and the mercenary stood alone in the center of the room. She caressed his cheekbones, sliding her hands across his nearly bicentennial skin – the cruelty, the bitterness of those words they had just heard was as final as the ulterior truth carried inside each of Rosario's carefully chosen phonemes.

"Go now," he whispered.

The doctor kissed him softly on the lips, tormented by the irrefutable nature of his existence – he was bound to last entire eternities without her; he was bound to leave her behind. She ran through the corridor and out the narrow streets until she found Rosario. They walked in silence all the way back to the brothel, with only the faint sounds of the cold, nocturnal drizzle to keep them company. Lights out, The House of Pleasure had clearly called it a day yet the lonely figure sitting alone by the bar was waiting for them to come home.

"About time," Etienne whispered, stirring the pinkish liquid in his glass.

"Bar's closed," Rosario said, her eyes finding Alex still standing right next to her in the dark room. "Go to bed, sweetheart."

"No, no…" The man stood up and walked up to them. "Don't go to bed yet,  _sweetheart_. A drink?" He offered, but Alexandra shook her head.

"What do you want, Etienne?" Rosario questioned, her patience running out.

The man balanced the glass in his hand then walked back to the bar and beckoned the ladies to join him – Alex sat at his right and Rosario, as usual, placed herself at the other side of the counter.

"We need to talk about last night; my associates and I are in need of a proper, coherent explanation. Dakota? Alexandra?"

"It's just a pet name," Rosario sentenced.

The man smirked, and offered her a disdainful smile: "We understood that letting Black go upstairs with your 'successor' –  _even when we had made it perfectly clear that he is not welcome here_  – was a mere exhibit of power… you, old fox, but that transgression paid off in the end, you see. It helped us see that this young lady here is not who she says she is," the way he spoke was truly unnerving: he was polite and straightforward; fancy and yet remarkably impersonal.

The doctor stared at the manager acknowledging the fact that her life was now in Rosario's hands. That woman was her only friend and still, she had betrayed her all the same – it was completely up to Rosario now to remain loyal to their damaged bond or to simply give her up and expose her.

"As I told ya, it's just a pet name," the manager insisted.

The man nodded his head and finished his drink, his blank expression was unreadable: it was impossible to tell if he was satisfied with Rosario's answer or not. He stood up, the empty glass now resting on the bar.

"You know this is your fault, right?" Rosario's words made him stop and turn around.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You talked to El-A, you filled her head with ambition and promises. Now she's chasing ghosts, dividing my own girls… Now she spies on us and when she hears a stupid pet name, she creates entire stories about betrayal and secrecy. This wouldn't be happening if you had waited, if you had trusted me and  _my_  decisions," the old, Peruvian lady sentenced.

"We didn't…" Etienne tried to defend himself.

"Of course you did," Rosario interrupted him. "You don't want Dakota to be the manager of this place – you want one of your own. And when I said 'no' you went behind my back and you told El-A she was going to be my successor. She's merely taking out the competition now."

Leaning on the bar, the man caressed the doctor's shoulder: "Even so, this whole Dakota – Alexandra thing  _is_  quite bothersome, my dear. So, from now on,  _no more irregularities_ , what do you think, Ros?" He smiled and walked up to the door.

"I like the sound of that but it's a two-way street, I'm afraid," Rosario's cold, raspy voice ricocheted through the empty foyer. "No more irregularities, Etienne."

As soon as the unwelcomed intruder had left the building the doctor went upstairs, headed for her bedroom. The corridor was dark and empty yet the yellowish, weak lights coming from the streets below were swirling their way through the thin curtains, exposing more than just the contour of every single piece of furniture displayed along the way.

"Hey!" Alexandra yelled the second she noticed two shadows leaving her room – the first silhouette was hard to recognize but the second one, the one moving faster than her companion, had its long, blonde hair dancing around her shoulders; skinny legs venturing the corridor and getting lost behind another door: Boma, the youngest girl in the brothel, had clearly been recruited by El-A's exaggerated tales. The doctor watched them as they disappeared from her sight then lightly pushed the door of her bedchamber, her feet stumbled upon many of her own boxes, now discarded and scattered carelessly on the floor.

They had searched her room; they had violated her privacy by going through her stuff.

Picking up her belongings one by one, Alexandra sighed and walked up to her bed: the little note caught her eye rather quickly.

'Traitor' it read.

El-A's story was evolving and escalating rapidly. The fake name affair was mutating into something else: now she was talking about betrayal and that concept was surely going to convince every single one of the girls that she was not to be trusted – not as a friend, not as an equal, and definitely not as a leader. How were they supposed to trust her now that she had finally accepted Erron Black in her bed, right after the man had attacked El-A? Covering her face with both her hands, the doctor reclined her back and tried to let go from all the tension still running through her body. She turned and tossed in bed, but slumber was still elusive. Her hands tugged the bedsheets as she turned one more time, the left side of her face buried in the pillow.

Yet the texture grazing her fingertips was different than the silky caress of her bedclothes: it was rough and warmer than it should be.

She sat up on her bed as she examined the garment, moving it slightly between her hands as she tried to recover a sensation that time and distance had buried deep inside of her: his old, red poncho – the one he had wrapped around her shivering shoulders that night by the mountainside, the one she had kept hidden inside her wardrobe for more than a decade now… they had found it; the memory had found her.

She got up quickly and opened the door to her balcony, letting the light in.

Resting on her bedside table, his old and weathered leather mask was unmistakably correcting her memory, molding and shaping the last moments thee had positively shared that night – somewhere down her solitary road, somewhere down the line, her own mind had distorted the memory.

As tears filled her eyes, the doctor finally remembered: the echoes of his abandonment, so powerful and heavy, had blinded her. He had never rejected her that night; he had forsaken her, that much was true, yet he had never rejected her. Black had wrapped his old poncho around her shoulders to keep her warm through the night and he had covered the lower half of her face with his mask so the smoke and the fumes emanating from the fire could not reach her. Then he had kissed her – or he had tried to, his lips motioning near his own old mask, and she had kissed him back, her lips imprisoned by the brown leather covering her mouth.

As she ran her fingertips on her own lips, the woman realized her loneliness had given her extra reasons to hate that man, to hate him more than she should have. He hadn't rejected her; he had longed for her and then, when the memory of his own past washed over him and hit him with the strength of a hurricane, he had left her there, all alone. Yet the tormenting images she had crafted inside her mind – her mouth longing for him and his vicious body quieting down her needs, those images had never been real. Those images were nothing but decoys she had crafter for herself, trying to hate him.

She sat on the floor; his garments now pressed hard against her chest.

The doctor stayed like that for what felt like an eternity, reliving the real images she had buried inside her mind. She got up and picked up her discarded, long, black cape then she folded his poncho and placed it inside her bag along with his old leather mask. The killer heels of her knee-high black boots were not made for running away, she reckoned, but they would have to do. Buttoning up her cape until her grey dress was completely hidden underneath, the woman walked up to the balcony and used the main pipe to descend to the inner courtyard – the girls were sleeping, each room was dark and quiet. She covered her head with the hood of her cape and made her way to the deserted deposit. Meandering through the many boxes and shelves there, and careful as not to make a single sound, the woman opened the back door at her left and ventured the night without looking back.

She crossed the street and turned left, determined to avoid the brothel's main entrance.

Then she ran east, her memory struggling to remember the path they had walked down only hours ago. With her bag still pressed hard against her chest, the woman marched through the night; the feeling of being in imminent danger followed her through the empty streets, a feeling she had never been able to shake, a feeling that had accompanied her ever since Black had left the door opened for her to escape that small, humid cell back in the prison.

As the buildings got lower, she hurried her pace. The maze of narrow streets, stretching itself before her eyes, could not stop her now. She saw the sleeping beggars at the sides of the road but this time, she didn't let her own fears paralyze her. Past the curtain and into the last corridor, she could have been mistaken by a shadow. She stopped to catch her breath in front of the last door – his door. Then she knocked and knocked again and again until a sleepy Erron Black let her in, grabbing her quickly by the shoulders and glancing over the corridor to make sure the woman hadn't been followed.

"Don't worry, nobody knows I'm here," she said, trying to sound reassuring.

Black closed the door and sat on his cot: "This is no neighborhood for a beautiful woman to be walkin' alone this late at night."

She blushed; her cheeks getting instinctively warmer.

Alexandra joined him on the cot and opened her bag, handing him his poncho and his mask. The man took his old garments, surprised.

"You kept them all these years?"

"Why didn't you tell me?" The doctor asked him. "That night… you kissed me, not the other way around. You never rejected me."

"You needed that," Black whispered, as he rested his poncho and his old leather mask on the cot, right next to him.

"But Black…"

"It's been so long, Alex," the mercenary interrupted her, his baritone voice softer than usual. "You needed to hate me, to despise me, I… I can't…"

"But you didn't correct me, you didn't say a word," the doctor retorted. "Last night you said why don’t you finish what you started."

The man grinned softly and shrugged his shoulders childishly.

"It worked. Didn't it?"

He kissed the corners of her mouth as her hands traveled his naked torso, but the woman broke the kiss just as the man started to toy with her hair.

"They found these things in my room," she explained. "They went through my stuff."

"El-A?" The mercenary questioned.

"El-A, or the rest of the girls, it doesn't really matter now - she's turning everyone against me," she looked down and took a deep breath.

"Not everyone," Black whispered as he tucked her black hair behind her ears, "Rosario is with you."

The woman scratched the tip of her nose, blue eyes finding him: "Can she be trusted?" she questioned. "Don't get me wrong, I mean… A woman in her position, do you think she supports their cause?"

Black smiled, as he realized she wasn't thinking straight anymore.

"No,” he said, shaking his head. “She overhears their conversations whenever a meeting takes place in The House of Pleasure, but she's always balanced that information in her favor," he explained. "You can trust her, in fact – you should have trusted her all along."

She rested her head on his shoulder as she went through the events of the evening. She told him about Etienne, and the girls leaving her room when she went upstairs. The word 'traitor' lingered in her mouth, as if refusing to let her go.

"If they already told El-A that she was gonna be Rosario's successor then the brat won't stop now," Black concluded bitterly. "And what about this man, Etienne, what do we know about him?"

"Not much," Alexandra answered. "He's a complete mystery. All I know is that he's a member of El Club, and he's loaded, so he pays for pretty much everything they need.”

“I never heard of him,” Black shook his head pensively. “I was once a member of El Club myself, a long time ago, but these names… I don’t recognize them.”

His time as a member of El Club de los Amantes had been brief and obviously easier than the intricate games this new syndicate was forcing them to play.

"I became a member thanks to Rosario's insistence as soon as I began working as an Official Enforcer – but they're all dead now, there’s nothing left of that generation,” Black explained as the doctor stared at him with eyes full of surprise. “These members you know, the new ones seeking power, are not the ones I used to work with," he said, crossing his legs. "Things have changed. Back then they would provide me with the information I needed: traffickers, smugglers, you know, everything about the black market. I would catch those criminals and bring them to the emperor, and, in return, he would let me keep some  _souvenirs_  from the confiscated items."

"And what did they win, what was in it for them?" Alexandra asked, eager to know why an illegitimate association would shake hands with an Official Enforcer.

"Part of the loot," Black informed her. "I used to share my  _souvenirs_  with the members of El Club; they could always re-sell the items and enjoy the benefits of a secure revenue."

"So, in a way, you were the first Rebel-Seeker, then," she laughed at the irony. "Not in terms of delivering rebels or Tarkatans, but with goods and money."

"You could say that… but all this happened way before the Rebel-Seekers."

"So that's how you met Rosario?" The doctor asked but the man scratched the back of his neck and looked down.

"No, we met when she was younger. I was one of her clients."

The woman nodded in silence as soon as he finished his sentence.

"By the time I became a member of El Club I wasn't a client anymore, the only reason for me to visit the House of Pleasure was business."

Rosario's words rang inside her ears for a moment but no matter how painful the answer, she still needed to know.

"Because Rosario was older back then? You stopped being her client because she had aged?"

Black took her hands in his and said: "No, I stopped being her client because I got married to another woman." As the dark shadows left her face, the woman breathed out, finding some sort of relief in his words. "Anyway, that's the story of how a mercenary crossed paths with the few aristocrats of Z'unkahrah… back then when the words  _honor among thieves_  actually meant something."

"Maybe we could have done the same thing now…" the doctor sighed. "I could have taken your place at their table."

" _Could have_?" He asked, puzzled, "You  _will_ become Rosario's successor, this entire El-A situation… it won't mean a thing in the end, you’ll see."

The woman stood up, placed her hands at the sides of her waist and paced around the room unable to hide her uncertainties.

"I'm not so sure anymore, Black. I just feel like my every plan is falling apart," she searched her pockets for her pack of cigarettes and lit one up, then she offered the little red box for the gunslinger to have a cigar, but the man refused. "You know I never wanted the exposition, so I came up with a plan - I was gonna command from the shadows, using one of the girls as my alibi."

"A scapegoat," Black deduced. "Clever. A front man to cover for you." He crossed his arms over his chest, a dark gesture taking over his face: "So you _were_ gonna take over the place, even if not officially."

The woman nodded.

"Careful, honey. Power corrupts people."

"I take it you talk from experience," she grinned at him, moving near the man still sitting on the cot. "Anyway, now that El-A's busy bitching around, I don't see how I'm gonna do that," Alexandra let out as she sat back down right next to him, her free hand landing on his back, "she's like a conduit for gossip; if she knows it, then everybody knows it."

"What do we have on her?" The mercenary questioned as he stole the cigarette from her lips.

"Not much. Her boyfriend gave her up a couple of years ago and now they're back together but she's still working with us."

"Her boyfriend… the recruiter's son?" He interrupted her. "If she's still working at the brothel even when she's back together with her boyfriend that means she stays…"

"So she can be closer to Rosario; closer to the power she seeks," Alexandra finished for him and Black cocked one of his eyebrows, the clouds of smoke leaving his lips were now completely engulfing his darkened features.

"You should have let me smash her head against the counter," Black smiled sarcastically. "It's not that hard to remove one silly girl from the equation – just say the word, honey. First one's on the house."

"Even if you killed her, the rest of the girls know by now."

He raised an eyebrow and offered her a half-smile.

"You can't kill them all, Erron."

"Try me."

"Besides, the first one's on the house, you say, but what about the rest? I don't have that kinda money," she laughed.

"We'll think of somethin', dear." He stepped on the cigar then got serious again. "So, they really believe they are gonna overthrow Kotal with this stupid brat as their leader?"

"Who said anything about overthrowing the Emperor?" The doctor asked, puzzled.

"Then what do they want now, the Rebel-Seekers?"

"Okay, John Wayne… I think it's time for you to finally see the bigger picture," she got up and took off her cape, letting it rest upon the only chair in the room, the one placed right next to the bed. Then she sat beside the mercenary, her eyes never leaving his. "The situation with the Rebel-Seekers hasn't changed, _they_ haven't changed; their precarious, illegal position hasn't changed – the only thing that's changed is the names of the ones bossing them around. At first, it was the Emperor but now it's El Club vis-à-vis,  _the syndicate_."

Black leaned in and observed her carefully as she went on; long gone was that frightened girl that just wanted to get back home – Outworld had swallowed her whole.

"The syndicate wants to control the contraband that the Census ended – picture Outworld as an airport, you ever been to an airport, Black?" She asked and he nodded his head in return. "Good, they would be Customs. They would be the ones controlling what and who leaves or enters this realm. The Rebel-Seekers that initially responded to Kotal are now responding to El Club, to the syndicate: they're the cannon fodder, the cheap workers just like they were way back then, when Kotal 'hired' them to hunt down the remaining Tarkatans and the few rebels that were still out there," the doctor explained.

"So, it's basically the same thing except now they found another leader," Black concluded.

"Exactly," she agreed. "And with a new leader comes a new goal. Kotal's goal was merely political so when he terminated them their retribution was also political. Now these new leaders are after different goals: economic goals, but their poor shape remains the same - they're still disposable, they're still rather easy to manipulate."

"The syndicate controls the contraband," Black went on, shaping his train of thought out loud.

"And the clandestine crossings," Alexandra added. "Because, as I'm sure you can imagine, not one bit of this trafficking madness can't be made through official portals."

"So, the Rebel-Seekers are their beasts of burden now, their mules."

"Precisely," She affirmed. "That's why the recruiter is such a key member of El Club – people know what happened when Kotal terminated the Rebel-Seekers Initiative, they remember the chaos, the bombs… The recruiter gives them a sense of organization, a sense of belonging, that's how the syndicate sells its propaganda, they shove their values down their throats and then the rebels comply, because they still remember, because they're still angry about what happened,” She paused, her hands resting on her knees. “They make them believe that by trafficking items for the syndicate, they are damaging the economic structure of this government and undermining Kotal’s rule. Kotal created a segregated army of uneducated people with no resources or official back-up; he made them run on promises and when he broke his promises, they went rampant. Kotal had promised them a better life but he forced them to remain in the shadows. When his own idea backfired, the Emperor terminated them: that was their closest approximation at actually becoming official, that barrister announcing in public that the Rebel-Seekers Initiative was over."

With a bitter expression written all over his face, Black remembered that moment, way back then, as he heard Yvo's voice in the crowd, just before being taken to the filthy cell that would become his home for the next decade.

"What they’re doing for the syndicate now is not that different from what they did for Kotal back in the day… the syndicate rules them now, and these people end up trafficking goods from one realm to another. They give them this fake sense of security, the recruiter talks about an entire organization and, sadly, many of the things he tells them are true: they do have their contacts waiting on the other side, the people facilitating those goods. They _do_ control the crossings and they even fix the pricing for each cargo to ensure the transactions will go smoothly. They don't even have to worry about distributing those stolen goods because the syndicate does it for them, and all the while they believe they are undermining Kotal's rule when in fact, they’re only helping the syndicate and its subsidiaries back in Earthrealm."

"But they _are_ undermining the Emperor’s rule," Black sentenced.

"I know…" the doctor agreed before adding, "What they don't tell them is that they're disposable; that if one of them gets caught while crossing, the syndicate won't help them."

"Kotal acted in the same way, he never cared for those poor bastards," Black went on. "But they crossed a line when they went after me."

The woman smiled bitterly: "They were already crossing all sorts of lines way before you, Erron, I used to be a healer for them, remember? I know all about their transgressions. If anything, you merely exposed both sides, the Emperor and the Rebel-Seekers, and you ended up paying the price for such a decision."

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead.

"We all did."

"That's why El-A is becoming a liability, and one I certainly wasn't counting on," the doctor whispered coldly as she intertwined her fingers with his. "The House of Pleasure is the most strategic place for this whole operation to take hold; it's obvious they want her in charge, they want one of their own. They know the brothel's manager is always legitimized by the people and they need that populism, they need that sort of support. If El-A's in charge, El Club gets automatically endorsed by The House of Pleasure, meaning they can basically recruit anyone they want," she stopped to catch her breath, feeling exhausted and aggravated by the memory of El-A. "This is her chance to knock me down."

"We won't let her; all she has on you is a name…"

"It's not just about a name, Erron. Not anymore," she interrupted him, "she knows I'm not the one I claim to be, and she has the power to spread rumors like a fucking wildfire – who cares if the rumors are true or not as long as they're entertaining?"

The man rested his chin on her shoulder and squeezed her fingers.

"El Club needs The House of Pleasure because El Club lacks the legal capacity to get funds, but The House  _has_  that legal capacity," she explained.

"I know, Rosario told me about this deal ages ago," Black helped her. "The House created El Club as an attempt to establish connections with the aristocracy of Z'unkahrah but El Club is just a table inside the brothel, reserved solely for rich people – there's nothing more to it. In a way, The House protects El Club, because The House has the legal capacity that El Club lacks but El Club has the money, and the funds it takes for The House to stay in business because let's face it: the common citizen can't afford to pay for sex but they do anyway because your price rates are ridiculously low."

"Because the members of El Club provide the rest of the money and funds we need," Alexandra sentenced. "And since we offer affordable relief and entertainment to the common citizen, we have their hearts, their trust, and their support. We control the oppressed; we have our own Queen."

He removed her hair from her face and caressed her cheeks: that woman talking about power and strategies had nothing to do with the one he remembered from his days before prison. Outworld had reshaped her, it had corrupted her. His own decisions had tarnished the woman he had tried so hard to protect; she had been right all along: he should have taken her home while it still mattered.

Her words traveled the little space between them, but his ears were only getting brushed by the distant echoes of her voice, his mind tangled in his own guilt, what he had done to her – the true extent of his actions.

"But if you go on, if you continue to act so recklessly, you're gonna get yourself killed," she said, placing both her hands at the sides of his face and forcing him to pay attention. "I don't know what you're looking for, but I refuse to believe it's just money. I know you want to make them pay for what they did to your wife but you gotta be careful, Black, you're number one on their list of enemies."

Black pressed his forehead against hers, breathing in her perfume. He longed for her mouth, as his hands roamed her body, his fingertips getting busy with her dress.

And then he stopped, ashamed.

"What is it?" Alex asked, running her fingers through the solitary stripe of hair in his head.

"I can't. I'm sorry," He breathed as he buried his face on her chest. The one she had become, the unquenchable thirst for vengeance still dwelling deep within him, the memory of Zar, the image of the man  _he should have been_  – all visions blended together, clouding his eyes. “I'm sorry," he mumbled again.

"It's alright," she whispered tenderly as she planted a soft kiss on his shoulder. "Your own time molded you, and this twisted culture exaggerated every aspect of your personality. That's what this place does, Erron – it exacerbates the worst parts of…"

Her voice trailed off inside his ears again; those images were still haunting him, torturing him.

She used her fingertips for the man to lift his chin and face her.

"We're gonna be alright," she said.

He grabbed her by her waist and kissed her fiercely then, his hands holding on to her as if holding on for dear life, as if trying to summon the one she had been before his negligence and his selfishness. He shifted her body in his arms so that she was now sitting on his lap, facing him, her long legs at the sides of his body, the heels of her boots connecting with his back. Panting, sweating, the mercenary broke the kiss only to stare into her big, blue eyes: they were shimmering in the glowing lights of a past that was never coming back – her shape, molded forever inside the palms of his hands, could not be contained by the meridians of his own shape. He kissed her again, softer this time, barely breathing into her mouth.

"Do you trust me?" he asked, the tone of his voice had been laced by a sense of honesty she had never heard before. At least, not from him.

She nodded, mistaking the meaning of his question. It was her time to kiss him now, his mouth instantly reacting to the sudden assault of her tongue dancing with his yet he stopped her, tracing the outline of her lips with the tip of his fingers.

"Do you trust me?" he asked again.

"Yes,” she said. Yes, I do."

He planted a soft kiss on her lips. Simple. Tender.

"Then there's someone you should meet. Can you do that for me?"

Puzzled, the woman held her breath as Black helped her stand up again.

"Now?" Alexandra asked, unable to hide the surprise from her voice.

The man nodded as he searched the room for his jacket.

"I have an asset – a very important informant. He can help you," he explained vaguely as he kneeled down in front of his cot and retrieved a small cardboard box from underneath it. Hiding the small object inside his jacket, he motioned towards the door, urging the woman to join him.

"This late at night? Really?" The woman asked again, incredulous.

"It's the kind of meeting you just can't afford to do in broad daylight, honey," He said as he offered her his hand, "I'll walk you to The House of Pleasure when it's over, I promise."

The doctor sighed helplessly but took his word and they left the building, moving smoothly amongst the shadows pooling around every corner, and walking hand in hand until the lugubrious buildings of the zone became a haunting memory inside her mind. The neighborhood became more and more elegant with every step they took in the night. She squeezed his hand – she recognized the area: they were getting too close to the Palace.

"It's alright," Black assured her. They kept on marching, quickly moving past the residential, suburban portion of the fancy-looking neighborhood and approaching the last section of the citadel, the one composed by Official Buildings, with the Royal Palace acting as the epicenter of the scene, surrounded by the Court, the Archives and the Barristers' Office. The gunslinger looked over his shoulder: even if he knew the zone like the back of his hand, it was clear that the woman was nervous.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Alexandra whispered. Her whole life in Outworld had been a perpetual escape from its authorities and now Black was leading her straight to them. The man seemed to pay no mind to her worries and concerns yet the tender squeeze from his hand quickly showed her otherwise. They stopped in front of the Barristers' Office and the former enforcer turned around and stared at the doctor longingly.

"The man's a workaholic; rumor has it he rarely leaves this place," he said as he knocked gently on the door. It creaked as the tiny, small man greeted them the second he saw them both standing in the rain.

"Black?" Yvo mumbled, visibly surprised but still, he moved, making room for the unexpected visitors to come in.

"Working late, Yvo?" The gunslinger asked nonchalantly.

"Always," the barrister replied humbly. He went back to his desk and put on his long, mauve coat – he was only wearing a thin white tunic when they arrived. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting any company."

"It's alright," the doctor said, apologetically. "We came unannounced, you don't have to apologize," she looked at Black, disapprovingly, yet the nearly bicentennial man simply shrugged his shoulders and sat on the barrister's desk. The rest of the desks scattered around the office were empty, only crowded by endless pillars of papers and Official forms waiting for the morning lights to dictate it was time for the barristers to get back to work.

"So, what brings you here this late at night?" The barrister asked. "I was just thinking about you, boy, but as far as I know I have yet to be graced by the powers of telepathy," Yvo chuckled as he handed Black the paper he was reading.

"What is this?" The cowboy asked, his eyes already scanning the letters.

"That is your evaluation, I'm afraid; the official statement from your boss," Yvo clarified. "Did you, by any chance, get to read the previous ones?"

The gunslinger shook his head.

"They are in the archives now; I couldn’t show them to you even if I wanted to," the barrister began, leaning in closer, "but they're terrible and this new report… well, boy, let's just say it doesn't look very promising either."

Black folded the paper and put it back on Yvo's desk, infuriated. He had always suspected that his superior was never going to help him get back to the place where he belonged yet now, with the confirmation of his every suspicion, he was starting to feel truly aggravated.

"If you really want to become an Official Enforcer again, you're going to have to  _do_  something about it," Yvo suggested.

"I'm good at what I do, ain't that enough?" Black reproached.

"You once caught  _his_  attention – you once knew how to stand out from the rest; you need to do that again, son because climbing the ladder, step by boring step, it just doesn't seem to be an option anymore."

"Is it really that bad?" The doctor joined them, picking up the paper and reading some of the passages written by Black's superior:  _Excessive use of his physical power, violent tendencies, complete lack of commitment, uncooperative, antisocial, doesn't follow orders_  were the first things she read. Disheartened, she too placed the paper back on the barrister's desk.

"Yes, it's that bad," Yvo finally affirmed. "I'm sorry, my dear, I don't think we have been introduced properly… although I have to admit this gentleman here sure knows his way inside a beautiful woman's heart. You certainly have impeccable taste in women, son."

The doctor stretched one of her hands but as she was about to introduce herself, Black stopped her from saying anything to the barrister. "She's one of Rosario's girls," the gunslinger said as the doctor and the barrister shook hands.

"Oh," Yvo said, a bit flustered. "I see."

The gunslinger stood up and placed his hands at the sides of Alex's shoulders: "Could you wait outside for a moment, I won't be long," he said.

"It's raining outside, dear. You can use the lobby; there are some antique benches in there for you if you want to take a seat while you wait," the barrister offered. The woman nodded in silent agreement and left the room, leaving both men alone.

"Thank you for making her feel uncomfortable," Black spat disdainfully the second she disappeared behind the door.

"I didn't know," Yvo shrugged, trying to apologize. "What's going on, son?"

Black braced himself, the time for games was over.

"I need a favor."

"What can I do for you?" The barrister asked, noticing Black's expression beginning to change, becoming somber, more pensive than before.

"You can help me right one of the biggest wrongs of my life…" He paused briefly, mustering his courage. "I need a portal."

Mouth agape, Yvo took off his glasses and stared into Black's eyes.

"No questions asked," the gunslinger added, nearly begging.

"Portals are tracked," the barrister began, completely stunned, "even if I wanted to help you, they would know about the crossing."

"There's gotta be a way," Black implored, his voice low, careful that the doctor waiting outside could not hear them.

"The Kahn tracks these crossings; the old portals were safe but when he became Emperor…"

"There's no such thing as _old_ portals and _new_ portals, Yvo, and you know it," his fist slammed the desk, an action he regretted instantaneously.

"You're right,” Yvo said. “But you know every portal is heavily guarded. The only portal that's not guarded is the last remaining portal from Shao Kahn's era, the one in the library – and no-one's been there in ages, Erron. Entire sections of the roof have collapsed; they even built this office on top of that old building," the barrister went on, trying to talk some sense into the man staring right back at him.

"Is that portal still working?"

"I don't know," Yvo shrugged his shoulders. “It’s been ages since the portal was last used, boy.”

"Is that portal still accessible?"

"I don't know, Black," the barrister repeated as his friend insisted. "I know some parts of the old library can be accessed through the basement of this building, but that's all I know. Where is this portal, if it still  _is_ , considering structural weaknesses, debris and the collapsed sections of the old roof, and whether it's still in working condition or not… I don't know, boy."

"And that portal, in case we can get there, in case it still works – is not being tracked?" Black questioned, trying to make sure no-one would try to follow them.

The barrister nodded, but he looked away almost immediately: "I don't want to be a part of this, Erron – whatever this is."

The gunslinger patted Yvo on the shoulder lightly and grinned softly at him.

"This was my idea. In case things go south, you were never here. I broke in; you had nothing to do with any of this," he offered, a renewed sense of honesty taking over his words. "Tell me how to get there."

"Go to the lobby, past the benches where I told your friend to wait for you – go downstairs to the secondary foyer, behind the front marble desk you'll find the entrance on the floor; the handle should be rusty due to the complete lack of use. After that, it's a long way down and I can't assure what you're going to find once you descend to the old building," the barrister grabbed the younger man by his forearm, "be careful, Erron."

The gunslinger nodded, appreciating Yvo's help.

"Thank you," He said but he turned around before leaving. "You should probably go home now, old man… in case something goes wrong, it'd be best if they didn't find you here. Just allow me a moment, then leave."

"And what about the woman?" Yvo asked, standing up.

"She'll be the one crossing, not me," the mercenary confessed.

"Is she aware…"

"No, she isn't," Black stopped the barrister before the man could complete his question.

"I understand," Yvo whispered as both men walked towards the door. "I'll wait until you both descend to the old building then I'll leave. But… why, boy?"

"I said no questions asked,” Black interrupted him again, his hand already caressing the doorknob. “It's better this way."

The doctor stood up the second she saw Black and the barrister leaving the office. Her hands at the sides of her body, she motioned towards them: "Is everything alright?" She asked, completely unaware of what was truly going on. Black smiled fondly at her and kissed her forehead ever so gently.

"My good friend Yvo here was just telling me about his investigation. Given his years as the Official Palace Barrister, he's been able to gather rather crucial information about the members of El Club," Black began as Yvo chose to stay completely still and completely silent. "He's been keeping these files downstairs, in the old building… We should go, take a look."

"Now?" The woman asked, "It's been a long day and an even longer night… I just want to go back home and sleep."

"You will, just… just a little longer," The cowboy assured her.

Yvo stepped up, then, determined to help Black: whatever it was that the gunslinger was trying to accomplish by sending that woman to Earthrealm, it was clearly taking its toll on him – he seemed hurt, nearly broken.

"Come with me," the barrister beckoned them and they both joined him as the tiny man went downstairs, to the secondary foyer. He walked around the great marble desk and kneeled down, his hand caressing the old handle barely visible from the other side of the front desk where Black and the doctor were standing. "You don't know just how many people come and go around this place during the day, my dear. This isn't something we can do during working hours, I'm afraid." Both Black and the doctor kneeled down right next to Yvo, helping the old barrister with the rusty handle. It took them a while but the floor finally creaked beneath them as the small wooden gate opened, revealing a dark, long path downwards – the only remaining entrance to the old, ruined library. Yvo grabbed one the torches adorning the marble desk and handed it to Black as the cowboy began to disappear into the darkness.

The doctor followed him, yet she stopped when she noticed the barrister was not joining them: "I thought you would be coming with us."

"No, my dear,” Yvo whispered, leaning in, "I already told Erron where to find my files. I can't go down there, the path is too steep and rough and I'm a very old man so I'll wait for you here," he smiled fondly as he watched her disappear completely.

The old ladder was narrow and fragile yet they both descended rather smoothly. Black was holding the torch for them to see the path – or what was left of it. He had heard about the old library; he had heard about its splendorous days, the ostentatious furniture and decorations that had been carefully chosen by Queen Sindel herself. Now all that was left of it was the debris of a fallen empire; the ashes of a ruler that had exceeded his power, fueled by greed and ambition.

"What happened here?" Alexandra asked, taking in the view.

"The ceiling collapsed," Black replied, crouching his way through a fallen beam. "Watch it."

Now books and statues were scattered all over the marble floor. The many cracks on the walls and the countless tears all over the defeated curtains were talking about a majesty that was no more. "This was Shao Kahn's library," Black explained, always moving forward through the debris, "when the ceiling collapsed, they closed the building and built the Barristers' Office on top of it."

"So… basically, the Barristers' Office could cave in, any second…" Alex deduced.

"Yep, I guess so. But nobody cares – they're just barristers," Black chuckled. "I guess this is just one of the many, many inconsistencies you can find here in Outworld: a building like this, where thousands of people come and go every single day can cave in at any given moment but they can spend an entire decade building a statue for the Emperor."

The woman smiled as she grabbed Black by one of his arms. The air was getting colder now, significantly colder than before. As they kept moving forward, venturing the pitch-black corridors of the ruined library, the timid lights of the portal began to appear past the fallen shelves and over the fractured columns.

"What is that?" Alex asked, mesmerized by the glowing luminescence waiting for them at the other side of the room but Black couldn't talk anymore: those lights were real, they were getting closer now. "Black?" The woman insisted but the muted mercenary kept on walking, almost blinded by the vision before him.

The vision of a life without her.

As Black removed the stones blocking the lower part of the broken columns, the oval shape of the portal became clear and completely defined in front of the doctor's mesmerized eyes. She swallowed hard, holding her breath.

"Black?"

He brushed his dusty hands on his trousers, then looked down.

"Black!" She insisted, yelling now, placing her hands at the sides of his face trying to force his eyes to meet hers but as soon as he stared back at her, she notices that there were tears in his eyes. He had planned it. He knew what he was doing.

She stood in front of the portal, petrified by its mere existence.

"First Rosario takes me to your place when I believed we were only going shopping… Now you take me here when I believed we were gonna read some files… well done, Alex," she whispered and the man embraced her from behind, tightly, his arms snaking around her stomach. He kissed her neck, but the woman flinched, moving away from him.

"Don't do this, Black," she begged.

He closed his eyes, inhaling her perfume and holding her close to his chest until the woman shifted in his arms and faced him. The torch was resting on the cold floor now, only inches away from the portal – the cold white emanating from the ethereal gate and the warm auburn hues dancing around the flame were creating a subtle shade of amber all around them.

"You can't go on living like this," Black whispered.

She tried to let go from him but his arms were too strong. Tight fists landed on his shoulders, her face on the small space between his neck and his shoulder.

"Leaving is gonna be just as hard as staying," she implored with tears in her eyes. "I can't go back now, Erron. Only yesterday I told you there was no going back home for me, what am I gonna do now? What am I supposed to tell them?  _The woman who returns from death, twelve years later! It's a miracle, she's back!_ "

He sat on the floor as she sat on his lap.

"This was the only thing you wanted from me," he said.

"Yes - over a decade ago," she retorted. "I'm pushing forty now; I've spent more time as a whore than as a doctor, Erron, for fuck's sake! Do you think Nathan is still waiting? Do you honestly believe that he’s still out there, searching for me after all these years?"

"I waited,” he said as his eyes met hers. “I searched."

"You had nothing better to do, Erron – you were rotting in jail."

"I could have taken care of my wife," he remembered helplessly, "instead of thinking of you and talking about you and forcing her to go look for you. I could have actually shown some love for that woman." He reached inside his jacket for the small box he had retrieved from under his cot and opened it for the woman to see what was inside: a handful of American dollars and a small pistol. He handed her the box and the woman took it but instead of keeping it, she placed it on the floor right next to the portal.

"Is this some kind of sick joke?” she played her last card. “You said those who run got something to hide."

Black leaned his back against the base of one of the columns and closed his eyes for a moment:  "You were talking about disappearing for a couple of days… this is different: this is permanent, Alex."

"No."

The mercenary held on tight to her; one of his hands at the back of her head and the other snaking around her lower back and waist. He opened his eyes for his unfocused sight to marvel at the visions before him: the white lights from the portal, meandering endlessly around the gate, were illuminating the back portion of the room, exactly behind the portal where the defeated ceiling kissed the ground.

"The fact that this portal is still standing is just… amazing," he whispered, and she looked around her shoulder to take in the view.

"Where does this thing lead to, anyway?" She asked.

"I have no idea," Black confessed, imagining the difficulties she was surely going to face along the way.

"Good to know… I don't think this thing is gonna take me straight back home," she was desperately searching for excuses, longing for reasons to stay – he could sense that.

"Where are you from?"

"Maryland,” she told. “Then I moved to Camarillo, with Nathan, when we moved in together," the woman looked down as her words died out in the air, ashamed, feeling as if speaking of her former boyfriend in front of Black was somehow off-limits for her now.

"It's a good thing I gave you money, then," the cowboy reflected as he stood up, forcing the woman to stand up as well. "Just go, Alex."

Facing the portal, the woman covered her face with her hands and turned around abruptly, her hands tugging his jacket.

"Don't make me do this, Erron – not now," she pleaded but the cowboy took her in his arms again and ran his fingers through her hair.

"Remember what I told you yesterday? That I was sorry, but that I didn't feel responsible for what you've become?” he asked. “I don't feel responsible for you choosing this path, but I  _am_  responsible for not doing what I should have done in the first place. You are right; none of this would have happened if I had taken you to a portal when you first asked me to." He slid his fingers across her cheeks, brushing off the tears cascading down her face. "I never wanted any of this to happen, I just wanted you to be someone else… then I just wanted you… but not like this, not like this, Al." Rosario's words were a heavy burden for the gunslinger to face now – he couldn't afford to think about the future, couldn't afford to imagine that woman in his arms aging and withering. "Yesterday you asked me just how many women I've slept with all over the years – you should have asked me how many people I have murdered all over the years…"

"Black…"

"That number is frightening,” he said, “that number is larger than and number you can possibly think of."

"I don't care," Alexandra retorted childishly.

"Of course you do," Black whispered, brokenhearted. "It's just a matter of time until you realize you do. When the shock of this reunion is over; when my face becomes a face you get to see every day you're gonna remember who I am, you are gonna remember just how much you despise me," he paused, his voice a mere sigh now. "That moment is gonna be devastating for us, Alex."

She shook her head, still holding on to him as if holding on for dear life.

"You may think it's not gonna be like that, but I assure you: it will,” the man sentenced. “Look at you now, Al… way back then, you were a woman with a simple, clear goal in mind: to get back home. I killed that goal, I tarnished everything you wanted with my selfishness but now you're talking about a syndicate and contraband and becoming the next queen of the oppressed when deep down, you never wanted any of those things. You said I'm judgmental, but I swear I'm not judging you – I'm just stupefied: from doctor to prostitute? This is not the life you should have lived," he raised her chin with the tip of his fingers, the bridge connecting their eyes was still vivid, pulsating right through them. "You told me, many times, that I was nothing but a selfish man – so you're gonna have to let me be selfish just one last time: you need to leave because  _I_  don't think this is fair. None of this is fair… not for me and definitely not for you."

"But…" She tried to speak but the man shushed her with a soft, delicate kiss on her lips.

"When I came here, I was already like this – a mercenary, a nomad… But you were different, and you're still young, Alex, use your time wisely; use it to be the one you want to be, not the one this place forces you to be."

"But what about you?” she asked. “You're never going to change."

"I've already changed more than I should have," his half-smile was trying to masquerade the pain he was feeling. The woman wrapped her arms around him, longing for him – the kiss was slow, definitive.

"When you talk about me, tell them I noticed when you changed your hair," he laughed, even with tears in his eyes, "and please don't tell them I never took you places."

The last kiss was urgent. It was a plea. It was a necessity. Then he picked up his box and handed it to her before placing both his hands on her shoulders to guide her towards the portal. Just inches away from the lights the woman stopped, his box pressed hard against her chest. She shook her head helplessly, the last bastions of hope collapsing all around her.

"Goodbye, Alex," he kissed her on the forehead as he pushed her body through the white lights and there he stayed, his boots pinned down to the ground. Her figure, washed in lights, became a mere shadow leaving his sight.

Gone.

She was gone.


	40. Neither Here nor There

Arc IV

Chapter XL

**Neither Here nor There**

* * *

 " _I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this-I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain."_

Antonin Artaud ― Letters to Génica Athanasiou

* * *

It wasn't easy for the barrister's languid cadence to successfully dodge the debris scattered along the way. A testimony about his longevity; his tired knees and his trembling legs meandered through the stones and the dust across the godforsaken ruins of what used to be Shao Kahn's library, searching for a clear destination. Not much had changed since his last visit to the original building – his memory was trustworthy, recreating the scene before his eyes as a perfect match for the one still displayed vividly in his mind. The pleas of a corrupted era still echoed all around him; the symbols of a tyrant that had destroyed everything in its wake, while answering only to the treacherous calls of war and ambition.

Bad choices and poor infrastructure were mere decoys that could never suffice to explain the true extent of Shao Kahn's actions as the emperor of Outworld. A time so dark, an époque so asphyxiating but still, as the barrister made his way through the old library, he couldn't help but grace his face with a bitter grin, remembering the fall of his beloved Queen Sindel, Edenia's most precious jewel, torn from her land and turned into a washed-up, pathetic tool.

Lost inside a woman that she couldn't even recognize in the mirror anymore, Sindel had finally been turned into yet another silent victim.

Outworld loved them, the realm simply loved creating them: silent victims, transversal to the entire social structure, present throughout the years no matter the ruler, no matter the circumstances.

Kotal Kahn's rule, even if not as conflictive and merciless as Shao Kahn's, had crafted some silent victims of its own as well. The man standing petrified in front of the portal was one of them; still struggling to belong in a world that wasn't even his to begin with, devoured by the same system that had once positioned him between privileges and luxuries, swallowed whole by the same justice he himself had dispensed and ultimately spat right back into the dirt and the mud that was Outworld.

There he stood, alone, as if hypnotized by the white lights dancing before him. Mesmerized by the vacuum and the solitude of a broken scene that was no more: the woman was gone, there was no trace of her, no shadow, no souvenir left to testify that she had, indeed, existed. The cowboy's coffee-colored eyes were fixed on the portal. Maybe he was reminiscing her, or the exact shape of her body, or her every expression, every minuscule movement of her face; perhaps her mannerisms or maybe he was trying hard to imprint her figure inside his corneas, trying to make sure he wouldn't forget her in the lonely years to come.

The barrister stopped only inches away from that petrified body. His left hand reached for Black's shoulder, tentatively, as if his mere touch could shatter the frozen man into a million different pieces.

"It's been two hours, boy," the barrister whispered yet the cowboy didn't move; he didn't flinch, nor he looked over his shoulder to address Yvo's worrying presence. The shorter man sighed helplessly then, his knees giving up. He walked before Black and sat on the base of a broken column.

"Erron?"

Yet the mercenary couldn't even blink, still too absorbed by the images emanating from the portal or maybe, by the complete lack of them.

"I told you to leave," Black said after a while. The sound of his own baritone voice had breathed life into his bones yet the nearly bicentennial man couldn't help but feel as if those lights had turned him into a statue.

"You were taking too long," the barrister mumbled apologetically. "I needed to make sure everything was alright down here. And trust me, my aching bones are not happy about this expedition either."

Black huffed, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Don't get mad at me, boy, please understand… in my mind, the possibilities seemed endless. Maybe the farewell was getting harder than what you had imagined, or maybe you were having second thoughts about sending this woman through a portal, or maybe you two were having a more… intimate type of farewell and if that was the case, I'm afraid this is a public building, boy, and you know it."

The brokenhearted cowboy tried hard to laugh at Yvo's mistaken assumptions but he couldn't bring his lips to move. He simply cocked an eyebrow and shook his head disapprovingly.

"You know, for a barrister… you really have a way with words."

Yvo shrugged his shoulders innocently – it wasn't the first time someone suggested his tongue was a rather troublesome muscle. "But even if you and that woman did get intimate…" he began, as if unable to hold back his words, "it's been two hours, boy, and you're older than time…"

Nearly aggravated by the implications hidden inside the barrister's seemingly careless words yet somehow amused by Yvo's apparent reasoning, the cowboy finally smiled, before inquiring: "What are you suggesting?"

"She looked young," Yvo blushed as he hid his hands behind his back.

"Yvo…"

"Two hours, Erron," the barrister emphasized. "And she's one of Rosario's girls… That sort of energy…"

Black raised one finger; his eyes were cold as ice.

"Watch your mouth."

Taking the not-so-subtle hint, the barrister massaged the sides of his own knees and looked down. His voice was softer now; his eyes were striving to establish a bridge between him and the troubled gunslinger staring back at him now.

"Two hours should not represent a thing for men like us and still, after being around for so long, everything tends to get… long, as if dragged – don't you agree, boy?” he asked. “Time has now become a thick, inescapable substance that has trapped us all in its intangible claws; it enjoys watching us struggle to find ways to trick the hourglass of our imprisonment and still, we are forced to witness the unstoppable machinery that it's made of every single time."

"I beg to differ," said the cowboy, approaching the older man and taking a knee beside him. "Even for men like us, everything seems fleeting somehow. I look back and even my time in prison does not really seem to represent a decent fraction of my existence. Surely it was a nightmare back then, having to come to terms with my lack of freedom, but now… now all that time I spent behind bars seems vague and remote. Just like everything. Just like everyone."

"But even so, you must admit that a part of you agrees with my perception: if everything and everyone seems vague and distant, then time has indeed trapped you, boy." Black nodded pensively in complete silence and then turned his back on the barrister; his eyes were busy again, contemplating the white lights of that portal just as if the flickering luminescence was a magnet, calling him on and on.

"She must mean a lot to you."

The words penetrated his skin like darts aimed for the most recondite places of his nomadic soul. The cowboy turned around instinctively, his eyes becoming beacons of light in the night, about to speak the eloquent truths of his anger and his frustration. He motioned towards the old barrister like a shaken, wounded animal ready to strike but his commotion quickly dissipated the second his burning gaze connected with the old man's eyes – it wasn't his fault that he had chosen to let her go; it wasn't his fault that she was gone. Something about his feelings for that woman must have been translucent to their eyes, the gunslinger reckoned bitterly as he contemplated the barrister's quiet expression. Just like Rosario had realized not so long ago, now it was Yvo's turn to state the obvious: the doctor surely meant something to him; the essence that woman had imprinted all over him still refused to let him go.

"Is it so obvious?" Black asked somberly, almost defeated by his own sad elucubrations. "You said it yourself, she was one of Rosario's girls, you know what that means…" he mumbled, trying to cover the evident truth yet his own voice trailed off the second he understood the frivolity of what he had just said: he had credited her impact on his life and now he was trying to lessen the effects of her existence.

The barrister nodded, yet the simple gesture was not enough to prevent Black's dark tribulations from resurfacing: her absence had trained his emotions, it had profusely altered his nomadic nature. The Erron Black before her could have successfully fooled them into thinking that their bond was adorned by simple superficiality. Yet the man after her was the shadow of that previous man; he was a permeable conduit of emotions traveling at the speed of light, corrupting the memories of a time long gone with the ashes of a new time - a time he himself had chosen to erase by sending her away.

"You are still here," Yvo began, "you could never bring yourself to love your wife in over three decades, why should I believe in furtive love now?"

Speechless, the mercenary stepped away from the portal.

"Why should I believe you fell for a complete stranger?"

"Why not?" The cowboy asked, defensively.

"Because you're not that kind of man," the barrister clicked his tongue, his tone still serene and reflexive.

Black hissed then glued his back to the column still standing behind him. "I thought I said _no questions asked_ , Yvo,” the gunslinger said yet the barrister smiled tenderly and crossed his arms over his chest.

"I'm not asking you anything,” the old barrister remarked. “I'm merely stating the obvious: she's been gone for over two hours and you're still here. You're either waiting for the woman to return, or completely unable to let go – even when you have already let her go."

"She's not coming back," Erron sentenced.

Moving farther into the shadows, the mercenary sank down on a pile of rocks scattered carelessly on the floor. From this comfortable distance, the lights from the portal seemed fatuous and vacant in the tenebrous sight that was the old, ruined library. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed Yvo still sitting a few feet away from him; his eyes still searching for a story, his patience still trying to convince him that it was time for them to climb back up that ladder and leave that dreadful place – and the doctor – behind. With a heavy heart, Black closed his eyes and exhaled loudly, feeling the hurricane of unsaid words approaching him.

He felt the urgency, the desperate need to let go from the tale that had narrated the last ten years of his life.

Yvo was there, ever friendly, always comprehensive, but the cowboy couldn't find the strength to talk and reveal everything about him and that woman: if he came clean about who the doctor really was, Yvo was surely going to deduce that he had lied to his own wife about Aalem. He shook his head, the migraine finally taking over him. His calloused hands massaged his own temples: what was the point, after all? Both Aalem and Zarrabayeusse were dead and the doctor was not coming back. Perhaps he had anticipated, somewhere deep inside his soul, that now he and the doctor were finally beginning to see eye to eye, it was time for him to let go. Maybe that had been the reason why he had chosen to open up and share their story with Rosario: there was no need to protect her anymore; the time for the woman to suffer and endure the consequences of his own arrogance and selfishness was finally through.

Like a river flowing out of control, the words began to leave his mouth. The story of his days with  _and_  without the doctor galloped through his memory with such unparalleled tenacity it left him breathless, even when he had purposefully chosen to avoid the darker aspects of their bond. Like a wild stallion striving for release, the simplified tale of boy-meets-girl seemed far from what had actually happened between them yet the stoic expression written all over Yvo's face was clearly indicating the cowboy that he had indeed painted almost every hue, shade and shadow in the palette of colors shared by him and the Earthrealm doctor with unprecedented precision.

"What you did was noble, boy…" Yvo said after a while, patting Black's shoulder. Even when there was no real bond between the cowboy and the barrister other than the memory of the friendship Yvo and Zar had shared a long time ago, Black could have sworn that the voice reaching out for him was the closest approximation to a sound he hadn't heard in a very long time – the tender, manly voice of Good Ol' Jacob, finding him after entire seasons of his life, eager to provide him with the fatherly advice he had lacked for so long. The same delicacy that had once been shown by the bartender of The Wise Bird was laced around Yvo's voice now, even when the words Black was willing to hear were far from the ones escaping the barrister's mouth.

"What you did was noble,” the old man repeated, “but it was too late, boy, and it was… remarkably cruel."

Black tilted his head back and covered his eyes with his sweaty hands.

"Casting her away like that, to be devoured by a world that she surely won't recognize anymore and forced to search for faces that maybe don't belong to her now – even  _you_  have to admit it was a very cruel thing to do and a very selfish way for you to escape from all those memories stirring inside but above all things, it was an act of pure cowardice," the barrister shook his head as a pensive expression took over his features.

"Now you may be many things, but we all know you are not a coward, Erron."

The headache was killing him. Yvo's words were knives aimed for his sanity.

"Letting her go was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do," Black retorted, his voice a weak whisper, "but now you tell me I was a coward for doing so."

"No, no, boy, don't get me wrong," Yvo grinned, his hands mid-air, apologizing. "I didn't mean it like that. It's not that she was some sort of package for you to get rid of, it's just that you've been through so much for this woman and this woman's been through so much because of you that now that you both were finally beginning to trust your emotions I can't help but wonder if maybe you felt so overwhelmed by her affection that you chose to shy away from it, sending her back to Earthrealm as a way to avoid facing that love."

Black opened his mouth to protest but no sound came out. Like a cornered child he lowered his head and simply listened as the barrister went on.

"You idolized the feeling for far too long,” Yvo said. “You ignited it, you desperately searched for it. Now that it is finally yours for the taking, you hide away like a frightened little boy… That sure sounds like cowardice to me."

In the shape of that tiny man, in the memories awakened by the barrister's presence, the paradox that had once existed in his life in the shape of Zarrabayeusse presented itself before his eyes. He wasn't a free man when he crossed paths with the doctor; Alex's apparition in his life had been nothing but a late, desynchronized joke meant to summon the ashes of his turbulent past. Even so, their time together had been mercilessly mutilated by his own impotence. The lost years of his imprisonment had been wasted on him, but her aging had not stopped, her aging had not waited for him. Zar had had to die for Black to become a free man, but an entire decade had to wash over him for the mercenary to achieve another sort of liberty. His physical freedom, just like the doctor, had arrived too late.

His freedom had killed her youth.

"Little remains of the woman I remembered,” Black finally spoke. “Many times, I entertained the idea of just turning around and leaving her all over again… but I returned every time, as if she was a magnet, keeping me close. And I obliged because I always remembered what she said to me the day I found her in the brothel: _if you wanted to show me that my life without you could get a million times worse than my life with you… congratulations_. I could have said those exact same words to her, you know?" He smiled bitterly to himself as his voice trailed off. "How could I ever bring myself to watch her wither and die? How? When I know I won't age a single day myself? Don't you think it's unfair? Don't you think it's a  _remarkably cruel_ thing for me to do?"

Yvo stood up and joined him in the dark. The old barrister's hands landed heavily on Black's shoulders.

"If she had stayed, we would have been on borrowed time,” the cowboy said, trying to justify his decision. “The years she still has ahead of her… I'd rather know she spent them surrounded by those who truly loved her," he explained. "Maybe, in the end, that'll help her remember who she really is, the woman she was supposed to be. Perhaps that'll help her erase the marks this awful place has written all over her." He lifted his chin, his gaze finding Yvo's. "Do you still think what I did was cruel?"

Another pat on the shoulder, another gesture of genuine friendship.

"Are you going to be alright on your own?"

Black soon found himself chuckling at Yvo's question, even if only involuntarily.

"Yeah, I'll be just fine. I've been here before, I’ve already learned how to adjust to the  _eternal_   _doubt_  and keep goin' no matter what," Black's voice, throaty and darker than before, was reason enough for Yvo to believe it would take more than time for Black to be alright again.

"What is this _eternal_   _doubt_  are you talking about, boy?" The barrister asked, somewhere in between curious and worried.

"It's not the first time I let  _her_  go," Black began, his diction impregnated by a renewed sense of honesty, making his words simple yet meaningful. "There was a woman in my life, my one true love, her name was Amanda. We were just kids back then, but that was love; never had a doubt 'bout it. But a man so young, so in love, is bound to make mistakes. My mistake was to let her go – I gave her up without a fight. I tried, but I could have done so much more than what I did back then,” he admitted. “Then the doctor appeared, and she looked just like Amanda. For a moment, I even thought she was some sort of a second chance for a man like me, even when most people would think men like me don't deserve second chances." He paused for a moment, the collection of images cruising rapidly through the highways of his memory was making it hard for the man to keep up with the words leaving his mouth. "I let Alex go just like I let Amanda go only to wind up reminiscing them. In a way, I think that original mistake, back then, when I chose not to fight for Amanda, marked the rest of my life and now I'm bound to repeat the same mistake over and over again. That's why I told you that it's not the first time I have let  _her_  go: this is a theory I came up with during my days in prison. Maybe there is no Alex, maybe there was never an Amanda. Maybe it's just a mutating "she", you know? A being made for me but that cannot be mine, forced to accompany me through the years even if only in my memories,” he had finally said it – the theoretical mechanism of his heart was now completely exposed. “I've never been the philosophical kind, never been spiritual… but I'm inclined to believe that this is the price I have to pay after that original mistake. Now I'm forced to let her go over and over again, knowing I'll find her again someday, only to let her go once more." He closed his eyes, feeling exhausted but somehow relieved now that he had said those words out loud. The burden was gone, the oppression in his chest finally leaving him. "The _original doubt_ is the punishment I have to endure. I came back for Amanda, but she was long gone; I never knew what happened to her. If she lived a long and happy life, if she had any children, or traveled the world… the same doubt will haunt me now and it's gonna stay with me for a long, long time. I just let her go but I don't know what the future holds for her. I won't know if she'll be able to recover all those years I've stolen from her life or if she'll find a way to be herself again... Until I find  _her_  again, only to let her go again."

"That sounds like a terrible life, boy."

Black offered him a half-smile and stood up; his arms crossed over his chest.

"Stop calling me _boy_ , I'm not fifteen anymore. I may look younger than you but we both know which one of us is the oldest one in this room."

"I am," the barrister confessed. "I am Edenian, Erron. If I already look this old, you don't want to know for how long I've been around."

"I didn't know…" Black whispered.

"Nobody knows… because nobody asks," Yvo shrugged his shoulders. "Right after Edenia was lost, Queen Sindel brought me here. I was a barrister there, so she offered me the same position over here although I should have said no," he remembered bitterly. "I saw with my own eyes the atrocities of that era: the war, the pain, I saw what they had to endure – my Queen and my Princess… I saw the hands of that man subjugating them mercilessly. Sindel brought me here, just like she brought about a dozen barristers in hopes to balance the scales in our favor. Poor woman, little did she know back then that we were going to be completely powerless in front of that man, his sorcerer, and his invention," he paused all of a sudden and stared intently at Erron, remembering who had given the man the ability to stand the test of time.

"Does Kotal know about you?" Black asked.

The barrister nodded.

"Sometimes I think about them, you know? My Queen and my Princess and I wonder – will they ever get used to the life they're forced to live now?"

Black sighed and considered what Yvo had just said: those words stung like a poisonous needle going through his skin. He sure knew what it was like to get used to the relentless march of time; what it felt like to try to keep up with a fate slowly taking over him, detaching him from the man he should have been. His hands were drenched in centuries of blood; his memory stained by the echoes of malice and death. Perhaps his path wasn't as tenebrous as the one Sindel and Kitana had been forced to travel yet it was a somber path anyway – a path too far away from the original path he should have walked. A deviation from the life he should have lived.

"But enough about me, let's not change the subject so brusquely, boy,” Yvo said, leaving the spotlight.

"What do you want me to say? There's not much to it, I'm afraid. I just need to wait it out," The mercenary said matter-of-factly. “I’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

"Why would you repeat the same mistake?"

Black turned his back on the barrister, his eyes once again captivated by the white lights dancing carelessly before him.

"Now you have the ending, just like you had back then… But what about real closure, boy? What about getting rid of that eternal doubt?" Yvo insisted.

"Don't know what you're talkin' 'bout," the gunslinger replied sharply without even looking at the older man.

"Of course you do," Yvo stood up and motioned towards the ladder; the way back was surely going to be painful and nearly insufferable for his tired, old bones but he knew there was no other way and there wouldn't be any other way in the foreseeable future either, considering the fact that the old library had been shut down a long time ago. No visitors were allowed, only memories and the old ghosts of a turbulent, shady past still hovering over the citizens.

"Why are you helping me?" Black asked. "Why do you care so much about me?"

The barrister smiled, but he didn't stop.

"Zar," he whispered on his way out. "That woman saw something in you, her intelligence proved it real. Whatever she saw in you, boy, it was not a simple mirage." As Yvo's tiny figure became just another shadow in the darkness pooling around the only entrance of the library, the one leading straight to the precarious ladder, Black observed the mesmerizing ballet of lights coming from the portal.

He shook his head, trying hard to focus on the last words the barrister had told him only minutes ago. It still ashamed him to remember how things had ended between him and Zar and all the lies about Aalem, the cruel way in which she had had to find out the truth – her cold eyes the last time he ever saw her and the uncontained fury, the wound corrupting the very essence of her being. No one ever knew about those final moments; no one knew about how helpless he felt when they told him she had been killed. Nobody knew what that moment actually felt like: they had taken away his every chance for redemption, even when he doubted she would have ever forgiven him.

He shook his head again; the memory was too painful. There was not a single redoubt in his mind that seemed welcoming anymore. Darkness at his back and the tremulous white lights of an uncertain future before him, Yvo's words reverberated all around him: _What about real closure?_

He rubbed his hands together, mustering his courage.

One last effort was commanding the impulses running wildly through the avenues of his nerves. One huge leap into the thin air would be enough… One leg, then the other, torso and head followed the motion to create one harmonic jump. Memories and expectations became the same elemental thing then, confused and blended inside the same chaotic tourbillion that was his existence. That was it: the oneiric state in which a body cannot discern dream from reality; life from death. That was it, the Nomad thought for the last time as the dancing white lights gave way to the darkness that now embraced him completely, wrapping him up in the onyx that defines everything that is unknown.

The Nomad levitated gracefully as his form became blurry. He closed his eyes and hoped for the best until his body, washed in white, finally disappeared.


	41. Scenes of Broken Love

Interlude

Chapter XLI

**Scenes of Broken Love**

* * *

 " _People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past."_

Milan Kundera

* * *

  **I**

* * *

  _Wickett. Texas._

_March 15th, 1859._

"What would ya like to drink?" The boy asked absentmindedly as his fingers held on tight to the washcloth resting on the bar. It was early, that much was true, but it wasn't the first time an early bird was asking for a drink.

"A glass of wine," the voice suggested, mildly an anchor for the boy to go back to the real world, "and a moment with you."

Chin up, eyes wide, hands frozen.

She would only drink alcohol from time to time, only when stressed or worn out. Yet the tone of her voice had breathed a lifeless kind of life into the still deserted saloon, so the boy acquiesced; their eyes coalescing in a single spark of light after quite some time.

Amanda had that effect on him.

"Hey, freeloader," he tried sympathy for a change, eager to break the ice. He would never charge her for food or drinks; according to Good Ol' Jacob, that's what a real gentleman was supposed to do for his lady. But something had changed between them during the last couple of weeks and whilst he still wasn't ready to reckon the fact that they were having trouble in paradise, he knew the motion of change had already been set.

"It's been a while; been busy?" he asked, and the girl nodded. The boy let the glass slid on the bar for her hand to catch it. "Hi, freckles," he said, a lop-sided grin taking over his enamored face. Amanda smiled back at him, yet the gesture felt incomplete. Almost dishonest.

"Thanks for the wine," the girl whispered. Unfeeling.

"Anytime," Erron reached out for her, his hands caressing her cheeks with renewed affection. "Now what about that moment?"

She tensed under his touch, even when her eyes were subtly telling him that she had, indeed, missed his tender ministrations.

"There's something I need to tell you," she began, but even when her hands were cupping his with unprecedented devotion, the gesture only contributed to the demolition of his hopes as his deepest fears intensified the dark, convoluted theories inside his mind.

Her distance had become palpable after  _that day_. February 25th, 1859, the day he had crossed all lines; the day he had taken a life. His first act as a killer. The final emancipation of his diminished innocence. His very first river of blood, streaming down the edges of his dormant consciousness – the initialization of the brutal life that was soon going to catch up to him, dressing him up in the crimson shadows of death, gore, and violence. He was only trying to protect his so-called family, yet he had erased a life from the surface of this world and the sin of what he had done should have felt like a dagger piercing through his innocence, corrupting his essence and engulfing him in the darkest of nights – but it didn't. The bodies were buried, the floor was moped, and pacts were made that day, then the saloon opened its doors that night as if nothing had happened and deep down, it had actually  _felt_  as if nothing had happened.

The kid was now a cold-blooded executioner, but he showed no signs of remorse or guilt. The night that followed such fundamental day had been filled with the perfume of romance in the air; with music and gossip, just like every other night. Only it wasn't like any other night. It shouldn't have felt like it was any other night.

Maybe she could sense it, dwelling deep inside of him: the latent stampede of his transgression, molding his adolescence in shapes and colors that should not belong to him.

The thought itself became horrifying for the young boy.

He had taken a life, but he was unable to feel any regrets. He had suppressed his own remorse only to boast in the honeyed accuracy of his skills. Death could not reach him; justice could not touch him, and guilt was a word that had yet to be found in his precarious, personal dictionary. But those blue eyes of hers, about to rain in front of him, were like violent hammers trying to demolish his imperturbable self. That was the only guilt he knew; that was his only fear: to become a murderer  _in her eyes_. To be pitied by her, to be rejected by the one he truly loved.

He braced himself and hoped for the best as images of those lifeless bodies flashed before his eyes, summoning a hurricane of unwanted memories. Still, the blow was harder than expected.

"My father wants me to marry the barber," Amanda let out, her voice unable to contain the anguish asphyxiating her.

The boy's expression changed abruptly: he was off the hook, yet he was about to lose her all the same.

She showed him the ring: it was simple, really, nothing fancy. Nothing to brag about. The honest symbol of a man looking for a serious commitment. Nothing more, nothing less.

She was safe from his sins, but fate was a whimsical bitch, slapping him hard on his face: little did he know, back then, that he was bound to lose her every single time.

He grabbed her by her forearm and dragged her out of the saloon. It was hard for the girl to tell what was going through his mind – his chest heaved in desperation, his tense jawline showed no emotion other than sheer fury. He let go from her the second they reached the Taggart house. With both fists, Erron knocked on the door; his unleashed impetus could not be contained inside her tears.

Nathaniel grinned the second he saw the young bartender. Those coffee-colored eyes were on fire.

He didn't wait for the older man to ask him what he wanted. Didn't even wait for Nathaniel to say he was welcome to come inside his house. He got on one knee, that's what a real gentleman was supposed to do for his lady after all. Each one of the tears cascading down Amanda's cheeks was being mirrored by the distinctive, tactless waves of laughter emanating from her father's mouth. Erron's proposal ventured the room, only to be silenced by yet more laughter.

"You got nothing to offer, boy."

Only then, Black stood up; his eyes fixed on the broken blue of  _her_  eyes.

"But she doesn't want to marry Mr. Farindon," the boy begged, "I'm the one she loves; how much more are you willing to hurt your own daughter?"

He felt his hands itch. It could be so simple.

He could end him – _actually_ end him. No more empty threats, no more childish outbursts. He could _end_ him. But ending Nathaniel would only undress his true form: the form of a ruthless killer. He could even end the barber; he could get rid of his competitor to ensure no-one would ever try to steal her from his shaky hands.

Yet deep down he knew: her eyes would stop him every time.

His own twisted reflection, forever alive inside her irises, had been damned by her pristine type of love. She would never love a killer, even if a killer was all that he really was.

He left her house disheartened, broken and shattered into a million pieces. The greatest love of his life was slipping through his fingers and he was unable to stop her. He walked back to the saloon; the faint sounds of her quick steps echoed behind him. Nathaniel was screaming her name, yet she was determined. Amanda grabbed him by the shoulder and forced the boy to turn around. She gave him no time to think; her hands were wrapped around his neck and her lips were on his lips. His mouth was numb, the taste of her kiss was just too sour to be properly enjoyed.

"Guess we won't get to see the world after all," Erron whispered, his upper lip was merely brushing her forehead. "Whatever that means."

Amanda laced her arms around him but those arms of hers were now haunted crossroads, chaining him to a perpetual déjà vu that would never set him free: he would end Nathaniel, but he would never be a murderer in her eyes.

But still, he would lose her every time. Every single time.

* * *

  **II**

* * *

  _Modesto. California._

_Twelve years ago._

The Australian man tilted his head back as his eyes traveled from the photograph in his hand to the actual human being sitting in front of him: there was little left of the jovial boy in the picture that could be recognized in the businessman who had hired him but anyways, who was he to judge…

"That's… that's the woman I'm looking for," Nathan stuttered. He didn't want to seem weak in the eyes of a stranger; let alone in the eyes of a man that looked as frightening as this man clearly did, but he was way beyond the limits of hiding his own states. If anything, he was more than ready to listen to the infamous line that would usually follow: " _Do you understand that she might have left with another man?"_

No matter the circumstances, no matter what could have happened to her, what could have caused her to leave, Nathan was certain she hadn't left him for another man. He knew her like the back of his hand; he knew she wasn't that sort of woman yet every single one of the interviewers and investigators he had seen during those difficult months had shown no signs of sharing his beliefs about Alexandra's loyalty towards him. The story was too strange, too complicated. Even for Nathan.

Alexandra had been hired as part of a scientific group that was supposed to spend two weeks in the Amazon Jungle, researching the zone. But when those two weeks became history and she never returned home; a worried Nathan was left with no other choice but to inform the authorities. The police report was conclusive: the group had never even reached their destination because they had never left the country.

In fact, there seemed to be no group at all. The company that had hired this collective of real ghosts did not exist. So, the words, bitter and merciless, would brush his ears time and time again: " _Do you understand that she might have left with another man?"_

He had heard that line a thousand times already but still, the sting of its supposed implications would hurt him every single time with renewed atrocity.

Nathan was tired of searching and not finding; he was tired of seeking answers and only finding yet more questions to add to the maze of multiple enigmas already weighing heavily on his head. Where was she? How was she? Was she being kept against her will or was she there – wherever that might be – of her own accord? Was she still alive? Were they right; was she with another man now? Could that be true, could that sweet girl in the picture, smiling fondly at him and wrapped up in light blue scrubs be cruel enough to do such a thing? Why her? Why was this happening to him?

Kano kept his eyes busy on the troubled man sitting right in front of him: the expensive suit Nathan was wearing had little to do with the baggy t-shirt from the picture. The mess of spiky hair from his youth, chocolate-like and barely brushing the young man's shoulders was now slicked back and tight.

"Money is not a problem. You just… think of a price and I'll deliver." Try as he might, he still couldn't hide the spoilt, daddy's-little-boy attitude that had ruled his entire life. Private investigators had achieved nothing. The police had been completely helpless: his girlfriend had seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth and no-one was able to do anything to find her.

Just one little girl; a twenty-something. Gone. Just like that.

The Australian mercenary put the photograph back on the table then folded his arms over his chest and shook his head mockingly, "I don't do this kinda jobs, kid." He stood up, exhibiting a sense of despondency that would surely help his message through. "Na I don't know how you got my number, but you better delete it." His red eye beamed surreptitiously, freezing the blood running through Nathan's veins.

That man was more than just simply intimidating, he was a menace; a true threat all by himself.

"Please, just… just call me, in case you change your mind," Nathan managed to say, his throat constricted. "As I told you, money's not a problem."

It only took a second for Kano to realize who he was talking to. As soon as he flipped the business card he had just been handed, his face was ablaze with renewed, uncontrollable anticipation: that nobody, trembling like a leaf before him, was not  _just_   _anybody_.

Nathan Davies, brand new CEO of Bhertineslitsz Pharmaceuticals was asking  _for his help_.

The mercenary looked around then back at the trembling man still waiting for an answer. Albeit young and imprudent, that boy surely wanted his woman back. Kano tilted his head, anticipating the fortune he had just found by chance, admiring the luring songs of an early, easy victory. As he savored the taste of a deal that he had yet to close, he leaned in, a broad smile exhibiting his teeth.

"But what if I told ya I'm not after money?" He smirked, raising an eyebrow. "Would ya still hire me?"

Nathan felt the doubt set in the middle of his chest and travel all the way up to his brain – a sudden tremor washed over his body, trepidation quickly gushing in the pit of his stomach. His contact had tried his best to persuade him but only now he was actually beginning to regret his decision: he should have listened. He had been told to only call that man if the situation was absolutely, strictly dire. Albeit all warnings, he had called him all the same. Now, far from home and deep into the darkness of a neighborhood, a bar, an atmosphere that felt completely alien to him, Davies was feeling completely helpless in front of that menace of a man.

Desperation had brought him. And desperation was still driving him insane.

"What do you want, then?" Nathan dared to ask, hiding his anxiety behind a colorless tone in his voice. He had tried almost anything to find his missing girlfriend; in his insufferable quest, he had crossed paths with the vilest, most disgusting thugs he had ever seen. Yet this man sitting right in front of him, smiling despicably at his most profound sorrow, was the epitome of darkness.

Kano chuckled poisonously, flipping the card with his fingers as if it was a worthless coin.

"CEO of Bhertineslitsz Pharmaceuticals… I can surely think of a thing or two."

How far was he willing to go to find Alexandra? Alone, in the lowest part of the city, risking his job and possibly his life, he was actually considering the chance of surrendering his integrity. Nathan fidgeted in his chair; mustering the courage he lacked to shake that man's hand.

"Do we have a deal or not?" Kano insisted, his patience running thin even though he was smart enough as to not let it show. The prey in front of him was way too valuable to let it go to waste.

"You still haven't told me what you want."

The Australian mercenary crossed his arms over his chest once more; the metallic parts of his body shinning in the night of terror. "I'll see what I can do for ya and your little wench… I'll find her if you  _provide_ ," he leaned in closer, and lowered his voice: "I want what you sell, kid. And I want it for free."

Petrified yet helpless, Nathan didn't need to know why Kano was asking for drugs and medicine instead of money. Contrabandists and traffickers had always been just right around the corner for the pharmaceutical industry after all. The young CEO took a deep breath: could that man find her? Wouldn't the price be too high – selling his integrity and entering the black market? Was he really ready to undermine his father's firm and give up on his future if that could lead him straight back to her?

"Can ya really put a price on love, mate?" The man was obnoxious. He was the father of all nightmares, yet those words were enough to seal the pact between the two men: Nathan shook Kano's hand and lowered his head immediately; unbeknownst to him, he had just sold his soul to the devil. A devil that was never going to reunite him with his missing girlfriend. A devil that, from that night on, was going to ravish his morals and his integrity, trapping him inside the blurry limits of a pact that was only going to lead him further into the darkness.

* * *

  **III**

* * *

  _The House of Pleasure. Outworld._

_Ten years ago._

Even if she still was a newcomer, it was easy for the doctor to understand something was going on. The brothel was crowded, and it was just past midday. The usual patrons that would come each night looking for release and pleasure were all there, gathered around the tables, gossiping about the importance of the announcement that was about to be made in the Palace. But the congregation exceeded the limited space that was The House of Pleasure as waves and waves of citizens were marching down the streets, headed for the Royal Residence. Their pace was frantic, their faces aglow with anticipation.

She moved around the tables trying to find a familiar face, but it was pointless: every single one of the girls was either outside or engaged in conversation. Rosario was still standing behind the bar, pouring drinks and listening to stories and tales about a man she knew too well to ignore.

Erron Black.

Rumors were capricious and substantially contradictory.

Some patrons were talking about a trial, while others were stating that whatever had happened between Black and the Kahn, it hadn't been a trial. There were others, however, that were more inclined to believe that there had been a third man involved in the showdown; one of their own – a Rebel-Seeker.

The unfamiliar voice coming from the Palace, echoed by the hundreds of citizens repeating the words like some sort of public radio, quieted all versions:

_"The first individual, publicly known as M'horel Ssui-'Pcha, is found guilty of the following crimes:_

_Attempted murder against the official enforcer known as Erron Black, twice. Attempted murder against the official enforcer known as Erron Black's wife, lady Zarrabayeusse Zmbrá Black. Criminal mastermind behind the fire that destroyed Mr. Black's personal property and led to the assassination of an unknown woman who was present in the scene. This crime, in particular, places Mr. Ssui-'Pchá as necessary perpetrator and thus responsible for the physical disappearance of the victim._

_Mitigating circumstances: none._

_Aggravating factors: Considering the fact that Mr. M'horel Ssui-'Pchá currently serves as an Official Palace Guard, the figure of Abuse of Authority applies to this case. The crime committed by the individual was especially heinous, atrocious and/or cruel. The capital felony was a homicide and was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner without any pretense of moral or legal justification._

_It is the judgment of this Royal Office:_

_For the murder of an unidentified woman, the individual is sentenced to be put to death in the manner prescribed by law. For the attempted murder of Erron Black and Zarrabayeusse Zmbrá Black the individual is sentenced to be put to death in the manner prescribed by law."_

As the voices outside and inside the brothel roared in furious discontent, the doctor froze in place. The glass of water she had been holding in her hand was now a collection of broken pieces of glass, scattered all over the floor. The news, cruel and vicious, were the ultimate declaration of war from the Kahn to the citizens he himself had gathered together. Most of the patrons stood up abruptly and left the House of Pleasure. Their destination was clear: the Palace would have a taste of their despondency. The woman braced herself and paced around the now deserted room, numb and overwhelmed: could she be the unknown woman from the verdict? Had Black spared her life once again, excluding her from the official version of the story?

The peculiar name she had heard was fundamental yet the voice still coming from the Palace did not give her any time to think about its true meaning. The message was alive and raw once more, ricocheting through the walls.

_"The second individual, publicly known as Erron Black, is found guilty of the following crimes,"_

Panic engulfed her then and led her straight into a dark void that consumed her like never before. It was Black's turn now to face the merciless verdict and little was there to quiet the voices inside her head.

" _The murder of the individual publicly known as Pareedis Ssui-P'chá, younger brother of the first individual, M'horel Ssui-P'chá, who was responsible for the destruction of Mr. Black's property and the death of the aforementioned unknown woman._

_Mitigating circumstances: The crime for which the individual is to be sentenced was committed while he was under the influence of a mental or emotional disturbance. The crime for which the individual is to be sentenced was committed as an act of self-defense._

_Aggravating factors: Considering the fact that Mr. Erron Black currently serves as an Official Enforcer of the Emperor's office, the figure of Abuse of Authority applies to this case._

_It is the judgment of this Royal Office:_

_For the murder of Pareedis Ssui-P'chá, the individual is sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment in the Z'unkahrah Royal Palace Maximum Security Dungeon for ten years. No parole will be allowed or offered during the first half of the specified term._

_During his imprisonment, the individual shall be removed from his duties and lose his status as an Official Enforcer of the Emperor's Office. During his imprisonment, the individual's wife will receive a pension derived from the individual's incomes and official salaries as if he was still working as an Official Enforcer of the Emperor's Office."_

She breathed, finally, as warm tears began to cascade down her cheeks. For whatever reason, the emperor had decided to keep him alive and even when the price he was about to pay was way too high, at least he was not yet to face the gallows. The doctor anchored her trembling hands on a chair and took a seat. The thunder of voices, blowing like a hurricane outside the brothel was about to roar louder than before: one of their own kind was about to die but Erron Black, the foreign cowboy, blessed and cursed by Shang Tsung's magic, had been spared.

As she cupped the sides of her face with her hands, the name set on her mind: Erron Black's wife,  _lady Zarrabayeusse Zmbrá Black._ Could that be possible? Black certainly didn't strike her as a man devoted to marital commitment yet she had taken a look inside his private box of memories and she had seen shades and colors that were far richer than the ones most people could see. She cursed under her breath as each insult exited her mouth through clenched teeth. He was capable of love; he was capable of devoting himself to the feeling. It  _was_  possible. But it was also  _plausible_.

She was almost certain that she herself was the unknown woman from the verdict. Aalem's name had not been pronounced during the reading so perhaps Black had swapped characters in his version of the story, trying to find a way to protect her.

Perhaps  _lady Zarrabayeusse Zmbrá Black_ was nothing but a charade built by Black and bought by the hundreds of enraged citizens now headed for the Palace. It  _had_  to be. That woman could not be his wife; he didn't have a wife, the woman pondered as she retreated further and further into a state of denial. Her own sanity was on the line; the only man she had desired after losing Nathan could not be a married man – their bond was convoluted, unnatural, uneven, but not unfaithful. The storm of tears clouded her vision. Ten years in prison; ten years… At least he was alive.

But what about her?

Would they ever see each other again after ten years? An entire decade… she had barely survived her first two years in Outworld, little was left for the woman to believe she could actually survive ten more years on her own. Ten years of waiting, and hiding and building up her expectations, aiming for a reunion that was as reliable as a message written on the sand, waiting for the ocean to wash it away.

Her own future seemed now written in the same fashion – mere letters, scattered on the shore, waiting for the rain, the waves, and the wind.

And what was she going to do if she ever saw that man again? Demand explanations? Bathe him in reproach? Wrap her arms around him?

As she summoned the strength to get up and move again, an unfamiliar hand caressed her shoulders slightly. She turned around and found those eyes staring right back at her – they belonged in a face she hadn't seen before. His hair was short and his eyes looked like dark chocolate. The man smirked bitterly; he seemed genuinely upset by the final verdicts.

"Well then, yours is a face I certainly haven't seen before," he whispered in her ear. "We could go upstairs and forget this awful decision. How much…"

She brushed his hand off her shoulder, her eyes were cold. Uninviting.

"I'm a doctor. I don't do that sort of thing," she clarified.

The man nodded and slid his left hand across her rigid jawline. She could have sworn that even for the most insignificant fraction of time, one of his eyes beamed red. The man smiled and mumbled an apology on his way out. The sound of his laughter gave her goosebumps across her arms yet Rosario's hands, landing on her shoulders, brought her back to reality.

"What did he want?" The old, Peruvian woman asked, worried.

"He asked  _how much_. He wanted to sleep with me," Alexandra answered. "I haven't seen him before, is he one of your regular customers?"

"No, I've never seen that man before, but he was talking to the members of El Club. He might be one of them, I'm not entirely sure. We better be careful," she added after a moment. "You told him you were a doctor?"

Alexandra nodded in silence.

"You should have told him you were a  _healer_."

Outside the brothel, Kano's figure walked through the crowd like a ghost that couldn't be reached. Taking advantage of the riots going on all around him, the Australian mercenary made his way back to the portal that was going to take him back home. Erron Black was still alive, and even if the unexpected turn of events was truly aggravating for their cause, he couldn't repress the smile suddenly taking over his face. Maybe the Kahn had saved that bastard for a reason; maybe life could finally show him a brighter side. He would have to wait an entire decade, but maybe Black's life had been spared so that he himself could be the one putting an end to it in the future.

Plus, he had already forgotten about the missing woman but that  _was_  her; there was not a single doubt in his mind. The auburn hair, the tranquil blue of her eyes…

He considered the chance of actually calling Nathan and let him know that he had found her – two years had gone by and the man was still chained to her memory. But why should he show any signs of humanity now? He had gotten exactly what he wanted from that man: he had forced him into a deal that had ultimately demolished his spirit and his integrity. If anything, reuniting Nathan with the missing doctor could become a liability, an undesired distraction.

Nathan was in too deep now. The doctor could shine a light on him, she could give him  _hope_.

So why should he show any signs of humanity now?

After all, it had never been his style.


	42. Stranger Things Have Happened

Arc V

Chapter XLII

**Stranger Things Have Happened**

* * *

 " _Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent forever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down,_

_but I wish you to know that you inspired it."_

Charles Dickens ― A Tale of Two Cities

* * *

  _Earthrealm,_

_0.8 miles outside Milton, DE._

_20:45 PM_

It was hard for him to tell if he had actually reached his destination. The darkness welcoming him was thick and uniform, making him question his senses and his most basal notions. Something in the air smelled like home already, he figured almost automatically, yet  _home_ was a concept that had mutated so many times inside his nomadic spirit that even then, it was hard to be sure if it still held a proper meaning anymore.

The stillness of the realm, far from the convoluted winds of Outworld, was still singing its same old songs about loss, bitterness and very distant pasts.

He felt heavier now, somehow. Seasoned. His actual age, manifesting itself inside his bones. Gravity wasn't all that different on the other side of the portal, he knew, and still, his boots felt the weight of a thousand lifetimes accumulated one after the other, pinning his legs down to the ground and forcing him to drag his feet oh so deliberatively slowly.

His hands reached out to touch the black void of emptiness stretching itself all around him but it was more than just a simple metaphor: he was actually touching the place where he had been born; the original ocean of dark waters in where he had seemingly been swimming for all eternity. That was Earthrealm for him now: an endless pool of blackness, grabbing everything he had once held dear, and burying it in yet more darkness. A vast, inconclusive emptiness. A breathtaking nothingness that had been waiting for him for so long now; the prodigal son's return, finally consummated.

The cowboy looked over his shoulder, his hands reaching out instinctively for those white lights dancing around the portal. Five fingers washed in the diaphanous paleness floating before him; the only source of light in that unknown room. The mediocre sight of inconclusive shapes and nearly surreal contours caught his eye as he moved away from the portal. As his body stumbled upon old desks and numerous empty shelves, the sounds of metal came to welcome him, its song sterile and distant.

Getting out of that godforsaken room was not easy.

There were times when his agility seemed to fail him, his senses overwhelmed by the commotion of brand-new information coming his way. His frantic hands explored every wall, every corner of that abandoned redoubt looking for a way out but to no avail. Darkness, for once, wasn't his ally.

It wasn't until he got on his knees after tripping on an empty container that his hands felt something else entirely. He recognized the material almost instantaneously: thin yet warm and impregnated by  _her_ scent. Wild fingers wrapped around her discarded black cape then, enough proof that she had successfully traveled through the portal; reason enough to believe that, once more, they both were gravitating towards each other, sharing the same world.

The warm breeze coming from the outside guided his chin upwards: the half-open window, right above the spot where he had found her cape, appeared then as his only way out. Muscles stretched and determination rushed in.

The outside wasn't as dark as the inside.

(In more ways than one.)

The crickets' tune, a sound long forgotten, brushed his ears as he moved away from the building. The insects seemed relentless in their improvised symphony, disclosing every secret that the night had to offer. The dark-blue sky above him seemed like a never-ending blanket adorned by thousands of distant stars. It was warm; it was new in its splendorous antiquity. The young moonlight was making its way through the trees and inviting countless leaves to dance as if contemplating whether to fall down from those branches or not. The first days of autumn, he pondered, clearly had everyone and everything struggling to find what to do, where to belong…

He took off his boots as he marched farther into the landscape. Still far from civilization, yet no longer near that obscure building. With his feet on the ground, the green grass wildly welcoming him back to a home he had rejected long ago, the last original cowboy came to a halt and contemplated the structure where the portal was located: concealed from humankind, discarded by a population that surely didn't even know about its existence, the door still connecting both realms was trapped inside an abandoned military facility.

It was easy to tell; the simplicity of such structures would never lie.

Hidden in plain sight, it was nothing more than a simple, box-shaped room entirely made out of concrete and steel. With walls covered in moss and wild vines, indicating that the facility had been abandoned for far too long now; the portal forgotten, the papers and weapons, gone. The symbol of a time that was long gone, giving in to the inalterable course of Mother Nature. A merciless titan fallen from the sepia-colored pages of history - perhaps subjugated by the urgency of war or maybe, just maybe, simply struggling not to succumb to modernity, and failing miserably.

The crickets had only offered him an introductory chorus. Now it was the air, the feeling of grass and earth beneath his feet, the precarious moving of the branches. A few birds still singing their songs, working overtime as night approached. He walked farther away from the abandoned facility only to find the indelible marks that mankind had imprinted on the land: traffic signs and the ever majestic paths of concrete, the architecture of civilization displayed vividly before his eyes.

And  _her_.

Sitting by a lonely tree, contemplating life at the other side of that deserted route. Her black hair dancing in the pale moonlight, head tilted back slightly.

He moved near her, suppressing the need to wrap his arms around her. This was not a rescue mission nor was he contemplating the actual chance of rekindling a flame he knew was not meant to be his. The mercenary simply sat down next to her as he balanced his heart and his mind. His eyes wandered the same landscape that had captivated her; the lights in the distance, coming from the many houses facing the Delaware Bay, the tranquility of such a small community. There was something remarkably peculiar about this realm, he found himself pondering rather quickly. Earthrealm was so weak, so worthless in the eyes of countless strangers – and yet they all had struggled to conquer it, to spread their madness and their ambition all over the realm and finally contaminate the place with every single one of their sins.

The image of that woman, sitting right next to him, seemed to encompass the very same fragility rooted inside the realm's most intimate core but still, he could not allow that fragility to tower over him and make him reconsider  _why_  he had chosen to return after such a long time. He had made up his mind decades ago. That place had never been his home, and it would never be. There was no home for men like him, he had accepted that notion long ago, had lived by its number one rule: not to get involved with anyone or anything if it wasn't strictly, professionally necessary.

And still, she had resuscitated the dead. She had forced him to join her in a walk down memory lane and now it was much too late for him to simply run away.

In order to fix his present, he was bound to fix his past.

Amanda was not retrievable, there was no way for him to simply go back in time and undo the things he had done back then. But Alex was a whole new story, a mistake he had yet to make – and it was his responsibility to make sure such a mistake would never see the light of day.

"What are you doing here?" The mercenary finally asked without looking at the seemingly imperturbable woman. "It's been more than two hours since you crossed, I figured you'd be on your way by now."

The doctor sighed but it was a sound Black couldn't quite place: was it the reverberation of her frustration? Was she tired, maybe? Or was it something else entirely? His only question had made it crystal clear for her: he hadn't changed his mind; he hadn't crossed through that portal to take her back to Outworld – if anything, he was there to make sure she would return home.

"Quiet, Black," she barely whispered as she flexed her knees and pressed them against her chest. Her naked ankles revealed her bare feet caressing the grass, just like his. Her black leather boots, carelessly discarded just inches away from the tree, quickly became a sour companion for his boots.

"Can't you hear it?" Alexandra demanded; her voice low, timid.

The mercenary tilted his head back and looked around, feeling suddenly startled.

"What…?" He mumbled.

"Everything. I can hear  _everything_."

Only then, she looked into his eyes. The same eyes she had both despised and cherished, the same color she had found inside Nathan's eyes; the same color, forever distancing the mercenary from the man she had once called her own.

"But what…?"

There were tears in her eyes, a sight he had sadly grown used to by now.

"The water flowing in the river, the birds singing and the crickets too; the wind in the grass… even the concrete complaining after a long day," she said, "I had forgotten about all those things. Such little details, I would have never thought I'd miss them so much."

 _This_  was her world, he understood. And that particular place, that part of her world, was now their private limbo.

"I couldn't just go," Alexandra explained. "Every detail caught my eye; I feel like a newborn, Black." She placed her head in the soft spot between his neck and his shoulder and exhaled. "And it's a long way to California."

"Yes, yes, it is," Black let out softly. "It's just that… I thought you'd be on your way already."

The doctor grinned tenderly as she shifted against him, her body leaning now against his chest.

"I…" she paused, "I was actually considering the chance of going back through the portal. Back to  _your_  world." The way she said the word, the emphasis she exhibited in those four letters rendered him speechless. "No matter how much I missed all these things, I don't belong here anymore. And you know it."

His fingers winding her hair, his arms struggling not to let her go. That particular place, that part of her world was, indeed, their private limbo.

"Why are you here?" The doctor asked.

"I'm here to take you home."

The woman moved away from him, the look in her eyes was intense, as if about to ignite.

"You doubted me?"

The cowboy shook himself as he stood up and offered her his hand for the woman to stand up as well. It was going to be a long night, he was sure.

"I doubted  _myself_ ," he said. She took his hand in hers and wrapped her arms around his neck. His own arms enveloped the woman, then, but she quickly let go from him, looking down.

"I really don't know how I should feel about you coming here," she confessed. "I don't know if I should be happy that at least I got another chance to see you; or if I should be devastated by the fact that you came here only to make sure I’ll return home."

He closed his eyes minutely, his lips hovered over hers, yet he did not kiss her. Silence wrapped them up in all its glorious awkwardness. Both Black and the doctor put on their boots and started to walk, headed for the city located at the start of the Broadkill River. Milton, in the distance, with its Victorian buildings and its beautiful riverside, would be the first destination for the broken couple to visit.

"I  _need_  to take you home," Black whispered as they made their solitary way towards the city.

She stopped abruptly the second she heard those words; that stubborn relic of a man seemed to be completely unable to see the most obvious of truths: twelve years had gone by and, with them, her hopes of ever getting back to the place where she belonged had perished, irrevocably.

"What am I supposed to tell them?"

"I’m sure you'll think of something," he stated matter-of-factly as he resumed his march.

"Black!" She grabbed him firmly by the shoulder, forcing him to stop again. She stared at him, intently, until it finally dawned on him: the  _other_  implications behind her absence, the ones way beyond the limits of time itself. Explaining where she had spent the last twelve years of her life would be hard. Tailoring believable excuses trying to justify her complete lack of communication would be even harder. But finding plausible reasons for the woman to be back  _now_  was the hardest thing to do. But that wasn't all. Everything that had happened to her during that time, the narrative of her years apart from the ones she truly loved, was physically demarcated by the scars scattered across her body. The number tattooed on her ankle, the geometrical patterns of a thousand lashes fragmenting her back, the brand on her shoulder… those were all symptoms of a truth that they could never comprehend. And he knew it.

The gunslinger resumed his march but instead of fighting the woman, he simply fell silent. Deep down, he was well aware of the fact that explaining the totality of the contents placed inside her parenthesis of time was surely going to demand so much more than just wit and intelligence – and even so, crafting the most peculiar, elaborate web of lies was one thing; but making them think there was enough verity to it for them to consider it true, was an entirely different thing. Those marks scattered across her geography were as challenging as they were cruel and they were still mirroring his own marks, the ribbons of his own history.

The riverside welcomed their steps in the night. A small group of people, possibly tourists, was about to go onboard one of the many boats resting peacefully by the bay. Black observed them in silence, then his eyes darted back to the doctor.

"You are gonna need new clothes," he reflected out loud, his hands cupping hers momentarily, indicating the woman to stop walking.

Alexandra offered him a puzzled look: "Just me?" She asked.

"What's wrong with my clothes?" Black retorted immediately, mildly offended. All things considered; his attire was much more  _normal_  than hers. The events of the day had taken him by surprise; he was not wearing kohl and, in the rush to leave his own place, he had not taken his cowboy hat with him. "I'd say you lose the cape, and we gotta do somethin' about that little dress of yours," he mused, refashioning her appearance even if only with his words.

"It's not a dress," Alexandra protested as she took off her black cape. "It's a long t-shirt."

The cowboy smirked and raised a suspicious eyebrow: feminine definitions and descriptions regarding fashion had always eluded him.

"Also, I'm not sure about those boots," the gunslinger went on.

"Come on, Black; you're wearing boots too," she bargained helplessly.

"Maybe… maybe a pair of jeans will do," the man considered, completely disregarding the doctor's observation. Black signaled the woman to stay put and wait for him then he crossed the street and entered one of the many shops facing the bay. In less than twenty minutes he was out again, carrying a medium-size bag in his hands.

"You didn't even know my size," Alexandra murmured as she grabbed the dark blue pair of jeans he had just purchased for her and tried them on. They  _were_  her size, she suddenly realized, becoming familiar with the material once again. Black offered her a half-smile as he urged her to look inside the bag once again: a pair of black ballerinas was resting at the bottom of the container and, much to her surprise, they were her size too.

She contemplated the shoes for quite a while: they seemed timeless somehow. A model so classic, so simple… _Timeless_ , just like him.

"Is it hard for you, Black? Coming back here?" She asked him, taking his hand in hers. The look in his eyes hardened the second he was able to feel the contact of her fingers on his again, the bridge between them was surely beginning to make him feel uncomfortable in his own skin. He had strived for it, hungry and desperate during his decade behind bars – no wonder he had been able to guess her size: he had imaged her shape so many times during his confinement, every inch composing her, the outline of her every corner, the exact measurement of every single part of her. And then, brief and tormenting just like most attempts at true happiness he had ever experienced throughout the years, he had had the actual chance of confirming those ethereal fragments of her in the small hours they had spent together.

Yet the look in her eyes was trying to soften his reasons; the touch of her hands was trying to sabotage his intentions: he wasn't there to try to hold on to her. He was there to say goodbye.

"It would be hard if I still held any sort of connection towards this place," he finally sneered, the severity in his tone matching the coldness in his eyes. Was it hard for him, going back to that place? He was there to let her go. It was  _inherently_  hard.

"As I walked towards the shop, I spotted a small inn just around the corner. Maybe we could spend the night there," Black suggested as he let go from her hand and walked towards the street again.

"How are we going to get to California?" He heard her voice in the distance.

"Haven't thought about that yet," he let her know, looking over his shoulder, and waiting for her to join him.

* * *

The old lady was reading the newspaper. It was hard to say whether she was actively ignoring the couple waiting for her at the other side of the counter or if maybe she genuinely hadn't seen them approaching her desk. Black hadn't lied about the inn being small. It was barely there, encysted right in the middle of the block, surrounded by giant stores. Poorly lit, the interiors looked as if someone had stopped the clocks sometime during the seventies, with wooden panels and a few pieces of décor scattered here and there, completely old-fashioned.

The fake, plastic orchids resting on the counter; the air contaminated by the countless cigars dying quietly on the ashtray.

Black and the doctor shared puzzled looks and awkward silence. It had been a very long day for them; they didn't have time for such a deplorable situation to come their way now.

"Excuse me," the doctor began, backed up by Black's poise and determination. "We'd like to know if there…"

"You want a room?" The lady interrupted her, without taking her eyes off the newspaper before her. "Here, have it," she handed them an old key with the number 5 handwritten on it. Alexandra opened her mouth to say something, anything at all at the woman's evident lack of interest yet Black put his hands on the doctor's shoulders, indicating her to stay quiet.

"How much for the night?" The mercenary asked, already searching for the small box he had given to Alex right before sending her through the portal.

"The night is 400 dollars. Breakfast is included."

"Excuse me, just how much did you say it was?" An incredulous Alexandra asked, feeling robbed already.

"400 dollars a night. Breakfast is included," the woman repeated almost mechanically.

"That's steep," the doctor retorted helplessly, already watching how the money was irreversibly leaving Black's hands. The old lady shrugged as she took the money and only then her eyes met Alexandra's.

"Breakfast is served between 8:30 and 10:30. Don't be late."

Black grabbed the doctor by the forearm, forcing her to forget about the receptionist and just go to their room. They had much to solve and think about before they would be ready to leave that eerie place; they couldn't afford to waste their energy in such frivolous matters.

As soon as they started walking, Alexandra noted that the corridor connecting the few rooms the inn had to offer was dark and narrow, with more plastic flowers than windows and more old newspapers resting on top of the two coffee tables along the way than actual books about the city. The end of the corridor led straight to a resting area with many tables and chairs, a TV, a couple of computers and a small cafeteria at the back – even if that part of the inn wasn't that big, it still looked cozy and warm enough for people to at least have breakfast in it.

Bringing her back to reality, the sound of the key opening the door to their room caressed her tired ears. The cowboy held the door open for her to walk in first, a gesture proving that, despite everything, he surely knew how to be a gentleman when he truly wanted to.

"Here," Black said as he carelessly threw a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the bed. "I got those for you. Thought you might need' em."

With a single, contemplative nod, the woman walked towards the bed, the  _only_  bed in the room. She glanced over the bed and back at the gunslinger already taking off his boots and jacket.

_Knock-knock._

"What is it now?" Black mumbled as he checked the door only to find the apathetic receptionist waiting for them on the other side.

"I forgot to ask," the woman began, her expression unreadable. She showed Black the solitary piece of paper she was carrying: their registration form, with only one thing left unanswered. "I need a name. Or a last name, I don't really care… Mr. and Mrs."

"Black," he answered simply, interrupting the woman and closing the door again.

"Mr. and Mrs. Black," Alexandra mused as she sat down on the bed, "sounds a bit pretentious given our history, don't you think?"

The man shrugged as he joined her on the bed, taking off his trousers and his burgundy undershirt.

"Get some sleep, we're only gonna stay here for one night. Tomorrow morning, we'll get goin'," he commanded, his head already resting against the pillow.

"How are we gonna get there, Erron?" The woman asked, now sitting cross-legged on the bed, her hands resting on his bare stomach.

"We can rent a car."

The way in which he chose to simply toss the idea, so nonchalantly, caused the woman to raise both eyebrows in complete surprise.

"Can you drive?" She asked, stunned.

Black, with his arms at the sides of his head, flexed his elbows for his hands to come rest under his skull.

"I  _know_  how to drive a car… now do I  _want_  to drive a car? No, I don't want to."

Her mouth, a perfect circle filled with silence, managed to let the words out after a short while.

"So, you want us to rent a car and drive all across the country, but _I_  would be the only one driving," she leaned in closer, her hands still resting on his stomach, pressing down a little harder now. "When was the last time you drove a car?"

He seemed pensive, engaged in the recovery of memories long forgotten.

"The seventies?" He ventured, "or was it during the sixties, maybe? No, no, it was definitely during the seventies."

"Things have changed since then," Alexandra said softly, finally resting her body next to his. The tired mercenary shifted slightly on the bed, allowing one of his arms to capture her smaller shape in a tight, warm embrace. His face searched for her neck, instinctively, as he rested his nose just below her ear. Then he finally closed his eyes, exhausted.

"Do you want to go to Maryland first?" He mumbled. "To see your parents?"

"My parents are not in Maryland, Erron," she began to explain, fingers already busy with his hair. "We moved from Maryland to California when I was about fourteen. My father was unemployed then, and grandma was sick. So, the three of us, my mom, my dad and I, moved to Fillmore and stayed with my grandparents. Grandpa was almost ninety years old back then, he could barely take care of himself, let alone looking after his dying wife…" her voice had become a soft caress he could only place in-between light stages of sleep. Yet the meaning of her words, the roots to her own story, prevailed before the ever-tempting arms of slumber. "I stayed with my parents in Fillmore until I moved in with Nathan."

"Then we're going straight to California," Black concurred. "And it's not like you'll be the only one driving: once I leave you to your family, I'll have to drive all the way back to Milton on my own, return the car and go back to Outworld." His warm breath on her neck, shaped after the words he had just pronounced, made the woman turn inside his embrace, using her elbows to shift her position. Only then, when his nearly dormant body seemed peaceful enough to be contemplated, she rediscovered the many scars covering his skin. It wasn't the first time all those marks scattered across his arms were catching her attention, far from that; she had seen them many times before. Yet now, bathed in the stillness of such a quiet night, she was finally able to discover some other marks, the ones she had never seen before.

Like the bullet wound placed just above his clavicle. Or the whitened short lines of many, many stitches, carefully hidden underneath countless waves of black ink, giving life to the tattoo adorning his arm and shoulder.

The part of him still struggling to stay awake cupped her hands in his. Through the curtain placed before their eyes, the one composed by a myriad of conflicting feelings, he could understand why she was paying attention to the marks on his body – why  _now_.

His decision had disrupted the very concept of time.

This  _now_  they were sharing seemed to be placed outside the limitations of man-made frontiers. This renewed intimacy they were sharing now was the opposite of that _other_ intimacy, the one they had shared many times back in Outworld. Danger had always been a constant threat for them back in Outworld. Every moment was meant to be brief and filled with doubt and caution. He slid his fingertips across the palm of her right hand: deep down he knew she hadn't even felt that sort of freedom only hours ago when she had chosen to go to his place all alone in the middle of the night. He had been the primary source of her fears in the beginning. Then, nearly everyone surrounding them had given them reasons not to trust them. In a way, it still seemed all they had was each other, now embedded in the distant night of a place and a time they never dreamed of visiting together.

Only hours ago, with her body pressed hard against his, he could sense her feeling that someone could knock on the door. Someone could just come in, grab her by the arm and drag her back to the brothel.

But nobody could reach them here.

And, as soothing as that notion was, it was still painful for the doctor to even try to comprehend Black's true motivations.

"Why are you here, Erron?"

"I'm here to take you home," he whispered weakly. "I need to know you'll be alright."

"You can't know that," she retorted, even when her voice was low and tender, far from the bonfire that could start a war at any time.

"Closure… I need closure," the cowboy said, understanding his simple explanations could never be enough. "One thing I learned with all my years is that letting go is not enough. You need real closure."

Resting her head against his bare chest, the woman closed her eyes.

"I once let go from someone, and when I returned, she wasn't there. I never knew what happened to her; I can't go through that again, Alex. I need to know that at least you'll be reunited with your family."

Grinning bitterly against his chest, the doctor said: "You'll know about me, but I won't know about you." Without even realizing, she had described the nature of their bond: uneven, intrinsically unbalanced. "Driving all across the country… it's not gonna be a quick trip, Black. What are you gonna say to your superior? How are you going to justify your absence?"

"I'll think of something, don't worry about me," he whispered. "You'll be with your family; I'll be the last thing on your mind."

"What was her name?"

A profound sigh filled the room.

"Amanda."

Yesterday's most precious name ventured the room only to die in the quietest of silences. Surrendering to slumber, the cowboy finally gave up and closed his eyes, both his arms anchored to her figure, trapping her in a warm, tight embrace. But a couple of hours later, when the emptiness between his hands became palpable even in his dreams, the cowboy opened his eyes to find her gone.

The cigarettes and the lighter he had bought for her were also gone. He closed his eyes again and went back to sleep.


	43. The Rulers of Limbo

Arc V

Chapter XLIII

**The Rulers of Limbo**

* * *

 " _I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding."_

Charles Dickens ― A Tale of Two Cities

* * *

 "Yes. I don't think so, no. Tomorrow, at 10:30 AM, is that alright? Perfect then, because we're in Delaware now, you know? I don't think we'll make it in time for the last tour today. But tomorrow, at 10 AM… Yes, two seats. How much is it? Fine, fine. Yes, two. Mr. and Mrs. Black. Thank you so much, we'll see you there, then." Alexandra hung up the phone, completely oblivious of his presence. The mercenary was standing by the corridor, his cold hands caressing the doorframe connecting the lobby to the corridor. Yet there was something about her; the certain light of a smile adorning her otherwise worried expression. The woman turned around and grinned softly at him, rosy cheeks abandoning all signs of paleness. Then she walked towards him, greeting him with the simplest of kisses.

"What was that all about?" Black asked with the car keys already in his hand. His old bones were eager to leave that awful place once and for all.

"I'll tell you everything about it over breakfast," the woman said as she grabbed his hand and ushered the man towards the cafeteria. "Come on, only thirty minutes left now and my, do I need coffee!"

If there was a word that could have described her attitude, it would have been  _lively_. Replenished, even.

Had she forgotten what was going on? Had she forgotten why he was there with her, and where he was going to take her?

"Were you talking to your family? You found them?" He mumbled poorly as she basically dragged him along with her towards the resting area at the back of the inn. "Your  _boyfriend_ , maybe?" He had heard her say _Mr. and Mrs. Black_ , he was sure she would never say those words to her own boyfriend but still, he needed to be absolutely sure that she wasn't simply trying to play him in order to convince him into taking her back to Outworld.

But she shook her head.

The cafeteria was nearly deserted. The apathetic receptionist was sitting all by herself at the other side of the counter while a middle-aged man, dressed in a blue suit, was drinking his coffee. A song she had never heard before was filling the otherwise silent room; the lyrics were vague and meaningless, in perfect concordance with the unnecessary loud beats coming from the radio.

"Then what was that all about?" Black insisted right away, watching the doctor as she signaled the receptionist to come over their table.

"Coffee, please," the beverage she had missed the most during her stay in Outworld was still her number one priority. As soon as the receptionist left their table Alexandra leaned in, a toothy smile taking over her face: "I made reservations for tomorrow."

The man tilted his head back and furrowed his brow, but her persistent grin made it crystal clear for the old mercenary that he hadn't misheard the words she had just said.

"This is not a honeymoon,” Black retorted quickly. “We won't get to bask in the sun while goin' for rides; we won't go sightseeing." He was serious, toying with the keys and showing them to the woman.

"Just bright up a little, would ya?" She seemed so carefree, so determined. "Where are you from, Black? Come on, humor me."

Her unexpected cheerfulness was starting to make him feel uneasy.

"Texas."

The word, loud as a drum, hit her with the certainty she was looking for and only then, the woman took the car keys between her fingers and balanced the light weight on the palm of her hand – she raised an eyebrow, contemplating his stubborn expression.

"GPS included, I hope."

By the way he looked at her, she should have known…

"It's a small device, like a tiny screen that helps you…"

"That fuckin' voice…" He cut her off, visibly offended. "I threw it away, was driving me insane. I rented the car only five blocks away from this place, do you know how long it took me to get back here, trying to follow the directions that stupid machine kept on tellin' me?"

The woman shook her head; eyes wide, holding back the laughter.

"Forty fuckin' minutes," the cowboy informed her as he slammed an aggravated fist against the table. "I threw it out the window, Alex…"

The woman looked at him with eyes full of disbelief; her pinkish cheeks were completely unable to hold back the impending guffaw any longer.

"But Black, that's expens…"

His index finger signaled the doctor to stay quiet and listen.

"I won't drive that car all the way back from California, you'll have to find a way to return it. I think I'll take the train, you know? When the time comes, and you're there with your family, I'll just take the train." He folded his arms across his chest, serious as can be. "The train is always better. It's safer, faster, cheaper…"

The woman tilted her head back slightly, suppressing the echoes of her laughter yet seemingly invested in the things he had just told her.

"So how did it feel?" The curious doctor asked. "Thought I heard you say you didn't want to drive a car, and here you are, already driving one."

"Somebody had to, woman,” he shrugged nonchalantly. “You were sleeping."

"If I had to be honest, I would have never imagined you could drive," the doctor said as she leaned in closer; her voice was lower now, as if she was trying to share a secret with him. "Ride a horse, totally. But cars…"

Seemingly insulted by her assumptions, Black cleared his throat and shook his head disapprovingly.

"It's the old-fashioned cowboy stereotype, isn't it? We are just supposed to ride our horses;  _real_  cowboys don't drive  _fancy_  cars."

Alexandra blushed slightly at his words – it was true that the  _old-fashioned cowboy stereotype_  was hard to forget whenever Black was around, but the man was full of surprises, and she knew that.

"I officially moved to Outworld back in 1981, so there came a point, while I was still living here in Earthrealm when I  _had_  to learn to drive," he clarified. "Time forces you to adapt; things like driving a car become mundane."

"I thought you had been living in Outworld for…"

"No," he interrupted her with a soft whisper. "I moved permanently to Outworld back in 81 but prior to that moment, and ever since becoming a man that can't age, I spent several years traveling between both Earthrealm and Outworld, working for different employers and basically following the money. At first glance, I didn't feel attracted to Outworld – who would, right? But sooner than later I learned that the best jobs were in Outworld,” he confessed. “I mean, the best jobs would usually  _begin_  in Earthrealm and  _finish_  in Outworld, so that sort of gave me the advantage to ask for more. I was one of a kind, after all; I was always the right man for the job."

"So that's the reason why you chose Outworld over Earthrealm in the end? The money?"

The man shook his head, his coffee-colored eyes already traveling far beyond the limits of the cafeteria.

"There was an incident in Chile, back in 81," he began; the look in his eyes was contemplative as if the man could picture all the scenes inside the theater of his mind. "I was hired to terminate a small group of Earthrealmers that was supposedly trying to cross over to Outworld. Boss was a complete nobody, but the money was good. They said it would be easy; only three men, all of them unarmed." He paused briefly, his lips were now a bittersweet, straight line. "But it was all a setup; it was an ambush. Two different groups were fighting over control of the portal and I got caught right in the middle of their fight." Black tapped his fingers on the table as the hurricane of unwanted memories engulfed him completely. "I managed to kill most members of each group and those who were not dead yet were surely gonna die right in the middle of that killer zone… but I was injured. So I jumped through the portal and hoped for the best."

The mercenary, wrapped in silence, could still remember his body aching like never before. Pools of his own blood painting his world red and Dexitis' hand, reaching out for him.

"What happened after that?" Alexandra asked, completely invested in the cowboy's story.

"Aalem's father rescued me, a blacksmith named Dexitis."

That part of the story she knew too well – Rosario had told her.

"And his wife, Aalem's mother," she remembered the darkest aspect of the time Black had spent with the family: he had fallen for the wrong woman; the doubts regarding the true identity of the little boy's father eating away at him with the vehemence of an enraged deity.

The gunslinger nodded in silence, guilt still charging at him.

"I also met Zarrabayeusse, my late wife, when I moved in with the family," Black cocked his head disdainfully as he leaned back on the chair. "But I guess Rosario's not that fond of that part of the story."

Alexandra raised both hands in a defensive stance, apologetically.

"And you stayed with them because you felt Dexitis' family could become the roots you had lost in Earthrealm?"

His eyes were fixed on the table; he didn't look as though the thought had never crossed his mind before.

"You want to know if I felt  _that_  connection? No, I did not," he sighed, his tone becoming more amicable now. "I didn't feel like I belonged with them; I didn’t feel the need to stay with them because they could provide me with the sense of familiarity I clearly lacked back then and still lack today."

"But Aalem…" Alexandra whispered softly as she recalled Black's uncontrollable tears the night he buried the boy.

"The kid changed things," Black said. "The kid was a completely different matter."

" _Matter_?"

The mercenary shrugged his shoulders and the woman soon found herself nodding in silence. She knew what he had meant by that, but she also knew that even after the real identity of Aalem's biological father had been discovered, Black's paternal feelings for the boy had not ceased to exist.

"It's not that I wanted to  _stay_  in Outworld… I just didn't want to  _return_  to Earthrealm," Black confessed, the honesty in his eyes suddenly towering over her. "I had been looking for excuses to leave… to leave  _permanently_ , that is. What happened in Chile became the excuse I had been looking for and Dexitis and his family became the reason I didn't even know I was lacking."

Such a complex man, torn from the pages of such simple times, and ultimately devoured by his own, convoluted nature.

"So then… if you officially moved to Outworld in 1981, that means you know what a telephone is, and a TV, even a blender," the woman smiled, trying to help him out of such obscure memories. "But I digress."

"That you do," Black grinned lightly at the woman, appreciating the gesture.

The incomparable scent of freshly made coffee suddenly filled the room and wrapped them up in a renewed sense of proximity. The receptionist walked back to their table with two smoky cups, but Black shook his head and rejected the offer – he had never been a coffee lover after all.

"So, where in Texas?" Alexandra asked him and renewed her smile as she received her coffee. "Be specific."

He shook his head helplessly; that woman had almost made him think he was off the hook.

"What for?" He sounded annoyed by her curiosity, even a bit irritated by it.

"Just tell me where you are from, Erron," Alexandra insisted as she added sugar to her black coffee.

Another sigh, colder this time.

" _Wickett_."

"Ha!" The impeccably strident sound of her exclamation reverberated all across the cafeteria. Her smile was insanely bright now, as if she was at the very verge of actually screaming  _Eureka!_  from the top of her lungs. She searched the back pockets of her jeans until she found a folded piece of paper. "There you go… courtesy of the printer they  _do_  have in the lobby after all," the doctor sang gleefully as she handed him the mysterious paper in question then she leaned in closer, as if anticipating his every possible reaction by thoughtfully examining each minuscule movement in his face.

Black's eyebrows arched slightly. Then he frowned; then scratched his temple. Finally, his hand became a fist, creating a ball out of the paper he had just been handed. He looked back at her; the look in his eyes was gravitating dangerously between unparalleled incredulity and plain annoyance.

"What the fuck is this shit?" The question, straightforward and salty, added to the obvious truth imprinted all over his nearly bicentennial face: no matter how happy she seemed to be about it, the man was simply not amused. Not in the slightest.

"This…" the doctor began, picking up the discarded piece of paper and stretching it out again for the cowboy to keep it, "is me, trying to help you." Her voice was softer not, even if not particularly lower than before. She had considered this possible outcome, after all; his rejection, his denial.

"I didn't ask for your help. Now finish your coffee so we can leave."

Undeterred, the woman's hands slid relentlessly across the paper until Black's marks were nearly gone, then she let it rest on the table. A minuscule, almost imperceptible sigh escaped her throat – she was clearly invested in this brand-new story she had discovered, and it seemed unlikely of her to just let it go so easily.

"Last night I was having trouble sleeping," Alex began.

"I noticed," still visibly mad at her, his words were cold and reproachful. "When I reached for you, you were gone,” he added, and the woman nodded in silence. "But I thought it was anxiety; I never imagined you were busy trying to wake up the dead." Disdainful fingers held on to the controversial piece of paper resting carelessly before him. "You could have used your time to search for  _your_ family…"

"You just read the title." Mouth agape, her voice was nothing but a mere whisper now. “You have to read the whole thing.”

_The urban legends of rural Wickett: the happy widow, the duel and the eternal bride. An unforgettable journey through the city's secret heart._

His old and tired brain could understand many things about modernity.

Tailored by an extended lifetime and a perpetual thirst for power and wealth, the mercenary was now a beacon of ancient knowledge, mixed with the unceasing coming-and-goings of countless traditions and the everlasting evolution of the very concept of idiosyncrasy. Human behavior had always struck him as flimsy and whimsical; yet his age had allowed him to adjust his senses to every subtle change in society, to every fluctuation behind the very psychology of change.

But even when he could understand her anxiety; even when he could see right through the barriers of all her defensive maneuvers, that decrepit piece of paper still felt as if that woman had just backstabbed him.

He had shown her his softer side the previous night when he had reached out for her only to find her gone. He could have easily left the room and forced the woman to come back and get some sleep, but he had opted to give her time and space instead, so the troubled doctor could at least try to process this new reality they were facing. When he opened his eyes in the morning, she was back; but instead of waking her up, he covered her with a blanket and let her rest while he busied himself renting the car that would lead them straight to California. With the car keys in his hand, the cowboy went back to their room to wake her up and have breakfast together only to find out that the woman was already up, talking on the phone and making plans that had nothing to do with the original path he had planned for the both of them.

"I don't need to read the rest, Alexandra, we're going to California whether you like it or not," Black stated before snatching her coffee and finishing it in just one sip.

The woman stood up, the paper now sleeping between her hands.

"This is what I can do for you," she seemed moved, even hurt by his reaction. "This is probably the  _only_  thing I can do for you."

Black placed his hands on her shoulders, trying to lessen the effects of his anger. He had no reasons to doubt the good intentions behind her actions, but he had never asked for her help.

"The car's ready. I hope you're ready too," he whispered in her ear as he walked past her, grabbing her by one of her hands.

"I won't go to California."

His determined pace came to a halt the second he heard those words.

"I won't go to California  _unless_  we go to Wickett first."

He cursed her under his breath, closing his eyes to mitigate the sight he didn't want to see: her arms crossed over her chest; her rigid jawline, her imperturbable expression.

"No," he seethed as he moved away from her, headed for the door. "We don't need this now, we gotta get to California."

"There won't be California without Wickett, Black," the woman insisted as she finally joined him, "I'm sorry, but I've already made up my mind." Her hands landed on his chest, the look in her eyes seemed softer now. "You're gonna take me home and I’m okay with that, but just let me do this one thing for you in return."

Black sighed, anticipating defeat.

"What you said last night… I know it's just a stupid detail, but it got me thinking, _Mr. and Mrs._   _Black_ …" The woman tried to explain but the cowboy grabbed her firmly by the wrist and took her back to their room. "You said you never found her…  _Amanda_."

"I don't wanna hear it," his back was glued to the door; his arms crossed over his heaving chest.

"But it makes sense," she nearly begged. "It really does."

Alexandra sat on the bed – if he wasn't going to read the information she had searched for, she would read it for him herself.

_The eternal bride of Wickett._

_The last stop in our journey tells the story of Amanda Black, Wickett's tragic bride, forever waiting for her man to return. Once a beautiful, rich young lady, Amanda…_

"Enough of that bullshit!" The mercenary implored. "What's the point? She's dead, Alex. It's useless."

"Closure. You said you wanted closure," the doctor offered as an explanation, moving closer to the man even when he showed no signs of wanting her anywhere near him.

"But this is not the way…" A calmer Black began, trying to keep her at bay.

"What are you so afraid of?" There was genuine curiosity in her question, combined with a slight hint of affection and even concern but the mercenary wasn’t ready to give in so easily. It was simple, after all. The woman was clearly looking for excuses to delay their trip to California. She didn't want to go back home and face the ones she had left behind twelve years ago. He could see that; he could see the obvious ramifications of her doubts and uncertainties even if she was honestly trying to help him find the closure he had missed for so long… but there was no point in revisiting the dead ghosts of an era that was long gone.

_Once a beautiful, rich young lady, Amanda Black became the protagonist of one of Wickett’s most tragic love stories: separated by the Civil War, and waiting for a lover that would never return, she spent her life reminiscing a man that, even in his absence, always remained by her side._

"This could be it, Erron," Alex tried to convince him as soon as she finished reading.

"Sugar-coated romance for stay-at-home moms? This story is the cross I got to bear, and I've been baring it alone, for as long as I can remember," his tone was soft; the cold and impersonal color of his eyes seemed to be finally melting. "Do you want to know what I'm afraid of? I'm afraid of having my story turned into a carnival for tourists; I'm afraid of the possibility of discovering that the woman I loved is now a freak meant to entertain people who simply don't give a fuck about us."

"Black…"

"No, no, no… just let me finish,” he moved away from the door and gently pushed the woman towards the bed, forcing her to sit down and listen. "I lost everything while chasing this woman. I lost her, I lost Annie, I even lost a child. I spent decades searching for this woman and now it turns out you found her? In just a couple of hours, just like that?" He got on his knees, his hands resting on her legs. "You found this collection of circus freaks and now you want me to go over there and clap my hands like a mindless asshole looking for cheap, old gossip?"

The doctor cupped his hands in hers; she had anticipated the moment in her head while trying to guess what his reaction would be like. She knew he wouldn't be pleased by her discovery but something deep inside was compelling her to insist – something placed way beyond her own desire about not going back to California.

"I think you fear an ending so sad that'll have you wondering whether it was best to leave the whole thing behind," she fought back, warm fingers intertwined with his. “But this is your story; and if you ask me, I think you have the right to know what happened.”

"I'm not asking you, and I didn't ask you, that's the point," his eyes wide open, the flames of his fury engulfing his consuming gaze. "And of course, it's best to just leave this whole damn thing behind. It's pointless, Alex, it's ridiculously pointless. I don't know what you think you've just found, I don't know  _who_  you think you've found but I can assure you that the woman I left back in Wickett has nothing to do with this  _urban legend_  they talk about. The woman I searched for during decades has nothing to do with this fairytale."

"Maybe you didn't search for the right person," the doctor interrupted him. “Maybe you were looking for the wrong woman – people change, Black.”

The mercenary collected the small box still hiding under his jacket as the woman observed him. Then he walked past her without even looking in her direction, his determination fully focused and unable to abandon the short path he had decided to follow. He sat on the bed, his body well distanced from hers, opened up the box and quickly busied himself counting the money they still had in their possession now that they had already paid for the room and the rental car. When he felt the woman's warm hands brush lightly against his knee, the gunslinger flinched and took a deep breath: those explorative eyes of hers were still waiting for an answer.

"You think I didn't search for her?" He inquired somberly as he finally closed the box. "I grabbed that damn town by the ankles, turned it upside down and shook it till the last soul had dropped down to the ground. But she wasn't there,” his voice trailed off before he could go on. Even if he was offended by her excessive enthusiasm, the man could not bring himself to fully blame the woman: little did she know about the tenebrous love story that had united him with Amanda Taggart. But if only she had known better; if only she had sensed the darkness surrounding their tragic love affair, she would have let it rest where it belonged: inside his sepia-colored dreams, somewhere in between his washed-up memories and his deepest regrets.

"I appreciate what you're trying to do," Black assured her, sounding conciliatory. "But this story you found is just a myth."

"And still, if you think about it… it makes sense, Black," the doctor seemed lost in deep introspection; her eyes narrowed and her lips barely moving. “Was she a popular woman back then?"

The question was weird, yet he nodded silently, nonetheless.

"She was Nathaniel Taggart's daughter, and the man was the town's banker, after all. You could say they were the emblems of Wickett's aristocracy back then," Black let out calmly, unable to hide the half-smile taking over his face: that woman sitting right next to him, the doctor lost in thought, was clearly joining all sorts of invisible dots before her relentless blue eyes.

"And your town; it’s always been a small town, right?"

He nodded again.

"A rural town… and this aristocrat woman falls for you, the local bartender."

Black chuckled at the thought.

"Yeah, let's go with that," he said.

"So, it really makes sense, after all." There she was again, at the verge of discovering the very mystery of life itself. "If she was part of a small-town aristocracy, then she could have changed her name to make sure no one would know about her real identity."

He looked at her, silently admiring her tenacity.

"They told me she escaped twice from her home," he remembered. "They said she abandoned her dying husband because she and some unknown soldier had eloped; but then her father told me the first time she ran away she was actually trying to find me.”

"She was married?" Mouth agape, hands flying all over the place.

"Yes. I searched for both, Amanda Taggart and Amanda Farindon; her husband's name."

She stood up and put her hands at the sides of her waist; her eyes examining a nonexistent chalkboard full of information that only she could see.

"With a war separating the two of you and a husband she didn't love, I can understand why she took the risk of leaving home in order to find you," her warm gaze met his. "But she never found you, right? It's so tragic it becomes painfully obvious, Erron: if she was on the run, and she was somewhat popular, it's only natural if she chose to use another name to preserve her real identity."

A part of him wanted to agree with the doctor: maybe Amanda had changed her last name to avoid being linked back to the father and the husband she had left in Wickett. Maybe that was the reason why he had never been able to find the greatest love of his life; she was hiding behind another name, a name so familiar it hurt like the scorching heavens of hell.

"Even if this theory of yours is true, I still don't think we should go to Wickett. I know my own story and, trust me, I don't want to be reminded," the gunslinger stated as he finally stood up again. "It's in the past, Alex. I'm never gonna know what happened to her and I honestly don't think this so-called tour will be able to tell me." He grabbed the box and held the car keys in his hand, balancing the tiny shapes with just two fingers for the doctor to understand it was time to go.

"I'm not dropping this, Black."

"You should," he said, his hand already caressing the doorknob. "I'm over it."

"You're over what, exactly?" One of her arms reached out for the door, closing it again and imprisoning the man between her body and the wall. "If you were really over it we wouldn't be here, you wouldn't be forcing me into going back to a place where I don't want to go."

Milton was their limbo, and they were the ruthless rulers of such a place. What to do, where to go – Wickett resurfacing after entire decades of his life; the place that had seen him fall, the city that had defeated him and California, smiling insurgently in the rearview mirror of her days, reminding her of everything and everyone she had loved and lost along the way.

The cowboy mercenary sighed helplessly as he removed Alex's hand from the door and placed it behind his own neck. Five warm fingers snaked around his exposed skin, pulling him close. His lips hovered over her face – beginning with her pale forehead, gently brushing away the black stray locks dancing before her; then they moved past the tip of her nose, then near her cheeks and her chin.

But not her mouth. Not anymore.

He leaned in closer, whispering the words in her ear: "Once you're done playing the historian, we're going to California, whether you like it or not."

She pulled his hair gently, earning a minuscule yelp from the man. Then she snatched the car keys from his hand and left him behind rather quickly. Still standing by the door, Black observed the doctor as she moved gracefully down the corridor and out into the street. His weary footsteps followed her down and found her standing petrified in front of the car – the materialization of their impending goodbye.

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and remained quiet by her side. He, too, was at the verge of simply taking her by the hand and lead her straight back to the portal but he understood this journey ahead of them was bigger than their fears: this trip was an opportunity for both of them to finally come to terms with the lives they had chosen to leave behind; it was their only chance to see if there still was something, anything at all, that could still be retrieved from those old days.

The engine roared just before midday; their eyes fixed on the hazy horizon stretching beyond the limits of their comprehension. As the doctor drove by, Black leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

 _Amanda Black_.

His clouded visions of a foreign yesterday made him wonder what it really meant for him, to find his name tied to hers, even if only in a fictitious zig-zag deep within history; to acknowledge their union in the form of a name that had never even existed, even when he had proposed to her, even when she had loved him and he had loved her in return. Perhaps he should have told her about the damning curse of his name; perhaps he should have told her about the evil spell contaminating those branded by that name.

The doctor's nearest hand gently patted his knee, causing the man to open his eyes.

She was still there, driving the car that would take her back to those roots she had lost long ago. The same car and the same hands that were about to take him back to the only place where he didn't feel like himself.

Wickett.

Wickett, once again.


	44. Homecoming

Arc V

Chapter XLIV

**Homecoming**

* * *

 " _I know you didn't bring me out here to drown, so why am I ten feet under and upside down?"_

Lifehouse – Storm

* * *

 Crossing over state lines was a game that took too long for the players to feel like they were getting any closer to victory. Raindrops on the windshield kept on dancing relentlessly as a dense canopy of furiously grey clouds stretched itself beyond the limits of the misty horizon. The quiet sounds of the rain kissing the concrete quickly became a symphony for their ears as the woman looked over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the sleepy cowboy traveling right next to her. The man was being lulled into slumber by the serene sounds that only nature could provide; the sounds coming from the radio becoming more and more distant as his neck surrendered peacefully to the quiet lullaby of the storm outside.

The doctor turned off the radio: the silver curtain pouring down from the heavens above was all the music they could need now. With a soft chuckle, her lips offered the man a half-smile, but his gaze wasn't looking at her anymore; his chin was barely touching his own chest, interlocked fingers resting on his stomach.

As the woman drove by, she couldn't help but cherish the sight of a nearly asleep Erron Black. The ancient mercenary; the vicious brute seated now on the passenger side was finally indulging himself, dozing off slowly to the sounds of the rain. It was rather endearing for her to find comfort in his child-like behavior, if only momentarily, as the man busied himself fighting the war against slumber unceasingly, opening and closing his numb eyes as an attempt to stay awake. In a way, it was like he was desperate not to miss a single moment of their journey. Not because of the ever-changing sights at the side of the road; not even because of a geography he hadn't seen in quite a long time – it was deeper than that, its ancient roots irrevocably anchored inside the most terrible fact: those hours they were sharing were the last hours they were ever going to share.

Falling asleep was not an option.

Clouded irises graced her briefly. Inside his calm expression, it was almost as if the man was subtly letting her know that he was doing everything in his power not to succumb, not to surrender to the ever-seducing arms of slumber. One last fleeting image of her tender grin shining its light down upon his tired body; a sight he was sure was never going to forget.

"It's alright…" He heard her voice, now a mere whisper in the empty space between them, as it ghosted lightly over him, carrying him through the closest of distances.

"It's alright," he mumbled back at her.

 _Pale fingers reached for his hand, as if unable to let go._ _They were both standing at the door – the tears dwelling inside her eyes were enough for the man to know where they were, whose house was that, who was there waiting for her on the other side of the door._ _But he didn't feel her warm fingers caressing his skin the second it opened._

_She was walking behind him now, as if afraid, as if paralyzed by a terror so profound it could shatter her into a million pieces. That house was the most peculiar of all places, with large spaces divided by thin, paper-like walls and a whitened aura of solitude and confinement._

_He could see the shadows moving slowly behind the walls; could see those figures coming together and waiting for someone to come visit them._

_For someone to come join them._

_He grabbed her firmly by the hand as countless unanswered questions filled her eyes with renewed sorrow. She had made herself perfectly clear before but now, while silenced by the circumstances, her unspoken words seemed louder than ever: she didn't want to be there, she didn't want to face those people._

_As the shadowed figures grew darker with each passing second, the cowboy understood that it was time to let go._ _And so, he did._ _His fingers released her, as she crashed helplessly against her own convoluted freedom. The doctor reached out for him again, but he simply moved away from her._ _It wouldn't be easy – he had known that from the very beginning, yet he had also known that there would always be a final moment waiting for them to say goodbye. Just like he had guessed, she was nothing but the recreation of the only woman he had ever loved, and the blending of those treasured souls had created a being made for him but that would never be wholly his._

_He observed her as she moved closer to the wall, her hands inspecting the thin surface. He could tell even her touch was reminiscing the one she had been before – before all doors, before all walls, before all shadows._

_Before him._

_When she walked through the door, he saw only light. Blinding; the purest white reflection ever had consumed her shape entirely. He retraced his own steps and moved closer to the wall again: now she was one of the shadows moving incessantly on the other side too. Her incomparable shapes, forever engraved inside his eyes, were calling him on._ _But when he tried to walk through the door, he felt the same white luminescence pulling him away from her; enveloping him in what seemed to be some sort of gravity well made by his own weathered impulses and his growing frustration._

 _He called out her name; each one of the letters composing her existence exiting his mouth in a desperate plea._ _Yet no sound came out of his mouth._

_Victim of his own nightmares, the ancient mercenary saw himself becoming the silenced protagonist of his own story. Unable to speak, unable to raise his voice and stop her from leaving, the man simply glued his calloused hands to the wall and closed his eyes, feeling the paper-like texture of the last barrier separating his body from the doctor's becoming thinner and thinner as seconds passed by. The white iridescence enveloped him completely once more, swallowing him whole and damaging him beyond repair with such cruelly warm fangs and a fiery tongue licking away what was left of his fragmented sanity._

_When he opened his eyes, he was inside. Warm as a womb, nurturing and seeking light – seeking life._

_He could not see their faces, most of them were still shadows dancing before him, moving all around him. Their arms – a perpetual embrace – were joined together in a bonfire of unrequited love. She was there now, melting in the flames of a reunion that was clearly overwhelming her; her arms like towers, reaching out for those strangers and becoming one with them._

_He tried to summon her with his fingertips, like a magician trying to cast his last spell. His fingers stopped before her, as if unable to go the distance. Then she found him, nearly crawling on the floor._

_The doctor stared at him._

" _It's alright," she said; the tenderness of her gesture growing darker by the second. She helped him up and tilted her head, as if unable to understand what was it that he was still looking for, what was it that he was still expecting._

_Why was he still there?_

_His silenced words were not enough to make her see that he had been wrong all along. He wasn't ready to let her go. But when he looked back at her, he saw the woman in her that he had never seen before. The one cherished by her loved ones, the one she had once been._ _He felt his legs going numb as his knees touched the ground – even when he was the only one sleeping, only she had positively awakened from her slumber. No matter how strong her denial; way past her fears and her insecurities, going back home was the only thing left to save her from the one she had become. The mercenary had been, at most, a beacon of light in a black and narrow tunnel that had been dark for too long. But she had a light of her own._ _She didn't need him anymore._

_As the family of shadows surrounded her; their hands trying hard to reach out for her, the desperate cowboy contemplated her face as she smiled in their direction. With his throat constricted by the words he could not voice, he watched as those luminous hands latched onto her and baptized her with their light. No more another part of the shadows, the shining woman waved goodbye in the quietness of her movements, feather-like and simple, like subtle streams of light floating all around him._

_That was the end, he knew._

_Still on his knees, he could not divert his mind from the words he should have said back when his voice still meant something to her – something more than just the laconic echo of a broken man slowly losing himself in the wind._

" _Turn the car around, let's go back."_

_She would have understood then, if only he had said those words while they still meant something. She would have endured his swaying impulses as they kept moving back and forth._

_She would have endured him._

_She would have._

" _Let's go back, Alex. Let's go home."_

The rain was gone.

As Black shifted his body on the passenger seat of the car, the yellowish lights of the sunset were already kissing the horizon. But the car wasn't moving. It was… late. At least, it was later than expected. He could see the subtle shadows of the impending night quietly wrapping themselves up around the trees and the houses, the same trees, and the same houses, albeit modified by time, that he hadn't seen in a long time. Just as she hovered over him for his coffee-colored eyes to swim back into focus, he remembered the hazy reverberations from his most recent dream.

_Let's go back, Alex. Let's go home._

The man in the dream, when cornered by her imminent absence, didn't particularly care about the place he called  _home_ , the rational individual inside of him could not find comfort in knowing that Outworld was nobody's home. He couldn't afford to think about what it would mean for her to abandon all hope and embrace the only life he could offer her: a life apart from the ones she could call her own, a life in the sewer that was Outworld, a life of danger and regret; a love that was meant to be as intense as it was meant to be fleeting.

Because it  _would_  be fleeting, seen through the kaleidoscope that was his own life.

He couldn't afford to think about her brief existence; the horrifying point of his life when he would have to watch her wither and die. The man in the dream had left all those notions behind. The man in the dream just wanted to go home with her.

The good doctor unfastened his seatbelt and slid her hands over his jacket as if trying to make sure he would still look okay after such a long journey. He smiled at her, even when he knew why she was being so attentive. They had reached their first destination, it was time for the prodigal son of war and time to reclaim what was rightfully his: the ashes of his own story, buried in the confines of his memories and the dust of an era that only existed in the avatars of western folklore.

_Home._

"We're here," she said as they got off the car.

In her quick search for the ghost of one Amanda Black, Alexandra had read about the beauty of rural Texas, the captivating sights of its many small towns – yet the landscape before her seemed even more rural than what she had in mind. Past and present were but sides of the same coin and the man was, in a way, the only bridge left to merge both eras.

Picking up the information she had printed back in Delaware from her back pocket, the doctor and the cowboy finally arrived at the small Revisiting Texas office. They were late – more than simply late, they were scandalously late. They had made reservations for the 10:30 AM tour but the trip had taken longer than anticipated and so they had been delayed by the rain and the lack of a GPS system.

"Excuse me," Alexandra let out quietly, causing the middle-aged man sitting at the other side of the front desk to abandon his Sudoku puzzle. "We are Mr. and Mrs. Black, we had reservations for…"

The man nodded immediately as he recalled her voice over the phone the day before. She had been quite insistent back then, asking about prices and the different stories that their tour had to offer.

"You said you were in Delaware, ma'am. I understand it's a long way from there to here."

"Yes, but… could we still get the tour?" She looked over her shoulder to grace a distant Black with a warm gaze. "My husband was born in Wickett and it’s been quite some time since his last visit."

Uninterested yet still determined to avoid the tour, Black took a step forward and let his hands land on her shoulders: "I know this place like the back of my hand," he began, playing along rather nonchalantly, "I'm not a tourist,  _honey_."

"Yes, but this is my first time in Wickett, so…" A mischievous smile took over the woman's face.

"Perhaps you can take the tour on your own then, I'll wait for you to return," the cowboy retorted quickly, and Alexandra nodded in silence as she turned around and shifted inside his arms.

"It wouldn't be the same without you,  _love_."

"There's no need to fight," the middle-aged man chortled gently at the couple. "You're welcome to join us for the last tour of the day. We leave at 8 o'clock."

The doctor checked the clock on the opposite wall: 7:40, they still had twenty minutes to spare but a late tour would also mean they would have to spend the night in Wickett.

"About accommodation for the night…" she asked, causing Black to exhale loudly at his growing frustration. "I drove all day anyway," the doctor said as she looked at the cowboy. "I could use a good night sleep."

Black bit the inside of his gums at the thought of having to stay the night in that dreadful city – how could he not see it coming from a mile away; it was only natural for the woman to want to take a break after such a tiring journey. Bringing the palm of his hand to his own face, the mercenary finally agreed and paid for the services: both the tour and the room the very same agent was more than willing to provide.

Lil' Wickett Petite Hotel – Room 12.

As soon as arrangements were made, the couple stepped outside the office and walked towards the street. The woman looked down instinctively, as if ashamed of asking so much of him yet Black, placing his arms around her small frame, simply invited the woman to lean her head on his chest and close her eyes, if only for a moment. Deep inside, the man from the dream was still screaming at her, albeit soundlessly, "Let's go back, Alex. Let's go back  _home_." She had brought him home, yet the very word was not enough to describe what he felt towards that place. That small, rural town had seen him fall for the greatest love of his life, lose his mind the second he realized there was nothing he could do to save his own mother, cry like a helpless child each time he would think about Jessica's final moments… That town had given it all to him only to take it all away. Wickett had provided him with a variety of lovable actors and had made them all take center stage inside his heart. Even if such picturesque constellation of individuals had been just too far-fetched from the notion of a regular family, he had loved them all the same. Yet one by one they all had been ultimately taken away from him and he should have known: Amanda was not meant to be the exception.

As the ancient gunman approached the walkway, his eyes darted around as an attempt to take in the view. Not much had changed since his last visit back in the seventies, or so it seemed. There were little modifications, though, nearly imperceptible, subtle alterations brought by modernity. Like brighter traffic lights for example, or the WI-FI signs displayed on every shop or coffee house around the zone. The little  _gangs_  of youngsters, walking around town as if the whole place belonged to them… their march relentless yet clearly not aiming for any given destination. People walking on by with their heads down, their eyes tied to whatever it was that they were watching on the tiny screens in their hands.

Amused yet a little disheartened by the rapid revelations of time and its intricate matrixes of behavior, the gunslinger chuckled lightly at himself before returning his gaze to the doctor.

"I… sort of thought it would look different," she said. "I imagined there would be…"

"Saloons? And horses?" Black laughed.

Flustered by his assumptions the woman sighed although deep down she couldn't help but feel ashamed by her own simplistic reasoning. The doctor was still thinking about a triumphant comeback when the middle-aged man joined them on the street, this time, wearing a navy blue cowboy hat and a little white tag glued at the left side of his impeccably white shirt, with his name handwritten on it:  _Hello, I'm your guide. My name is Matthew._

"Hope you're ready!" The man exclaimed as he rubbed his hands together. "We’re about to begin."

Before Black could even shape his discontent into visible gestures, the three of them were already crossing the street and walking towards the town's central square where they were supposed to meet with the rest of the tourists. If the doctor was to be honest, she was a little surprised by the lack of a van or vehicle, especially considering the fact that they had paid for  _seats_. Noticing her growing uneasiness, Matthew explained to her that the tour was meant to be intimate and cozy so groups would usually walk from one spot to the other – not only they could get a better view of the city that way, but also a tour where people were bound to walk ensured small congregations; plus, the distance separating one highlighted location from the next one wasn't that big after all. Wickett was a small, rural Texas town; it was only natural for people wanting to explore its secrets to walk their way through the heart of the city.

The town's central square was meant to be both, the starting point and the final destination of their journey. "Oh, there's Judith," Matthew said as he pointed his finger at a young woman, probably in his mid-twenties, wearing jeans and a pink tank top. "She's my daughter and also, my assistant," the man let out proudly.

Chewing her pinkish bubblegum and sporting an overall I'm-so-bored demeanor, the young lady greeted her father with a slight tilt of her head and proceeded to hand him a green clipboard with the list of names that were about to join them for the late evening tour. There was little in her that could be used as a mere resemblance to her father – the man's warm looks seemed colder in her; her old man's interest and good predisposition were simply nonexistent in her.

"She looks just like her mother," Matthew sighed as he watched his daughter leave, headphones already in, the echoes of loud rock and roll music disrupting the tranquility of the evening.

The unbothered gunslinger shrugged his shoulders as he motioned towards the center of the square where a handful of people had gathered around the benches. As he approached them, he soon figured they were the rest of the group, composed only by two young couples. The first couple was Asian, and rather sooner than later they were all going to realize that neither the boy nor the girl were fluent in English. The second couple, even younger than the first, was clearly on what seemed to be a romantic escapade and, while completely unable to get their hands off each other, at least they were excited about the tour unlike the Asian couple, whose components were barely able to understand what was going on around them.

In a certain way, it amused the tired cowboy, as he let his mind wander how on Earth they had gotten there in the first place.

"Good evening," Matthew began as soon as he approached the group. Hands at the sides of his body and voice louder and clearer than before, the guide was finally taking over. "My name is Matthew; I was born in this town many, many years ago and now it's my pleasure to guide y'all through this lovely evening." Southern charm and everything, the man had suddenly become an emblem for all things Texas.

Bored to death, Black had to struggle his way through facts he had learned a long time ago: when the city was founded and what was life like in the beginning; though he quickly found himself admitting that Matthew's version of life in the time of cowboys and saloons was way more sympathetic and colorful than the actual experience, plus a myriad of rather self-indulging jokes about horses and prostitutes.

"This tour offers three significant stories that help illustrate that life," the guide went on, "the happy widow, the duel and the eternal bride of Wickett are old tales that have their roots tangled deep inside the town's most intimate core – I hope you enjoy them; even if they are just old urban legends carried by the wind and the dust of this place, we all know they all evocate the truth of the old days, each in their own way."

In order to listen to the first tale of the evening, it was imperative for the group to get going and so they did, quietly marching northwest. When Black yawned and the doctor smacked the back of his head she could see the regret in his eyes: even when she was simply trying to help him find the closure he had been seeking so desperately for the greatest portion of his life, he still didn't want to be there. Enveloping one of her arms in his, the woman smiled fondly at him as the improvised couple marched in the night. As the first stars appeared in the sky, becoming radiant pearls scattered carelessly in the silky, blue blanket above the trees and buildings, the woman let her head land on his shoulder and closed her eyes minutely. He could have told her about the importance of good intentions; about the warm feeling that always accompanies the most sincere gestures of the heart – yet he remained quiet, gently stroking the woman's forearm in silent understanding.

"When was your last time here, Black?" Alex asked.

He could sense the goodbye approaching them as his name became surreptitiously removed from her mouth, reverting him back into the impersonality that was Black - and still the tone of her voice was soft and serene, as if the woman was keeping herself busy, searching for reasons for her to cling to the man that only she knew he could be.

"Back in the seventies."

The woman smiled quietly the second she heard his answer: the seventies had also been his answer back when the gunslinger had told her about his driving skills.

"Such a busy decade for you, huh?"

Black shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly as he tightened the grip around the woman; this time, allowing his arm to snake around her waist.

The group stopped their march in front of the local post office. The building had already closed for the day yet that didn't stop Matthew from standing right in front of the double gate, ready to tell the first story. Black and the doctor remained a few feet away from the rest of the tourists, listening to the tale of the happy widow. According to Matthew's story, back in 1932, there had been a woman named Irina Pugliesi, an Italian immigrant who had once crossed the ocean seeking a better life. Her arranged marriage to a local farmer was not enough for the woman to fulfill her ambitions with neither the financial stability nor the privileged social status she was looking for but when Gregory Mills – her husband – passed, she was informed that he had kept his primary bank account a complete secret.

Free from her ties to a man she had never truly loved and unexpectedly wealthier than ever, the woman visited the local post office one Monday morning, looking for any clues that could reveal the real identity of the person who had been kind enough as to let her know about Gregory's secret account. She showed them the anonymous letter she had received several days ago but to no avail: none of the employees seemed to remember who had sent that letter in the first place. Frustrated, and positively knowing that the sender wanted to be found (it was a small town, after all; they could have simply left the letter by her door), the woman insisted until one of the employees, a skinny boy with big, brown eyes, told her that the person who had sent the letter had been a man named John and that he worked at the local bank.

"Determined to thank the man in question, Irina went to be bank the next morning. She was only looking for a cordial handshake but instead, she ended up meeting her one true love," finished Matthew, nearly blushing by the extremely pink tale he had just narrated.

Quickly leaving Irina and John behind, the group resumed its march; this time, headed for a place Black knew too well to pretend otherwise.

"Did you know about her?" Alex asked. "This woman from the story, Irina?"

"No."

The night breeze was growing significantly colder now; the wind caressing the branches was enveloping the group in the dark blue hues of the dying day. As they got closer to their destination, the cowboy could feel his heaving chest becoming increasingly warmer than it should be – his heart was beating madly, as if trying to perform the drumming song of his convoluted past. The buildings had changed, there was little left to remind him of the original landscape where the initial version of himself had existed a long, long time ago, still, he could recognize the path like the back of his hand as if nothing had changed.

"What's wrong?" Alex asked, worried about his suddenly stern expression, yet the mercenary kept on walking, seemingly paying no mind to her growing concern.

Being back in Wickett was harder than he remembered – every building, every inch of the land was eager to remind him of the one he had been; the one he  _should_  have been.

When the group came to a halt, the mercenary could feel his own soul dropping down to the ground. Back in the seventies, he had discovered that the saloon where he had spent his childhood and a great part of his teenage years had been turned into a bakery, but now the sight in front of his eyes was reason enough for his spirit to be filled with the deepest of sorrows.

A parking lot.

The Wise Bird was now a parking lot.

Keeping his distance from the rest of the group, the mercenary crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his back against the nearest wall just like a stubborn child that refuses to go on. The doctor walked up to him, blue eyes asking all sorts of questions.

"What is it?" she whispered softly in his ear trying her best to avoid being heard by the rest of the group. "It's alright, Erron, you can tell me."

The gunman looked down then up again. His features lightened the second his eyes met hers.

"I'm just tired, that's all."

Patting his shoulder gently, the doctor tilted her head and furrowed her brow.

"It's this place," he finally opened up, knowing the woman could not be stopped by simple, innocent white lies. "This is the place where I grew up in, my saloon." The woman turned around and took a good look at the lifeless concrete taking over the scene. Suddenly she was fully capable of understanding why his mood had surreptitiously changed: they had erased the monument of his early years. Forehead to forehead, the doctor sighed as she realized she had been the cause for all his grief. Bringing him back to Wickett had been her idea, after all. Perhaps she should have dug a little deeper before exposing him to the cruel reality of a place that was his no more.

"If you could all join me now, I'll gladly tell you the story about  _the duel_."

Like an artist trying to captivate his audience, Matthew was already promising another story and, judging by the looks of it, the saloon was about to take center stage.

"This place you see now before you… I know, I know, it doesn't look like much but it gets better, trust me; this emblem of suburbia is one of the most notorious spots when it comes to unveiling Wickett's truest history." Introduction complete, Matthew moved around the group. Eyes big and a wide smile taking over his face, the man was clearly having a good time.

_And here we go…_

"Many years ago, years before  _us_ , people would come to this exact place to have a good time. Wickett's dearest saloon was placed here: The  _clever_  bird."

_The wise bird – it was the wise bird, you moron._

"The saloon was pretty much like the place y'all have in mind already; with beautiful girls, a handful of cowboys and lots and lots of booze, but there was one girl, one girl in particular…" the guide lowered his voice, his tone becoming suddenly, unexpectedly sultry. "This lady, not only she was beautiful, but she also had the sweetest voice ever.  _Jocelyn_ the singer, would go onstage every night to captivate each and every single one of the patrons."

_Josephine._

_Her name was Josephine._

_And she was my mother._

Black's hands became fists, hanging angrily at the sides of his body. His eyes darted around until they found Alex staring back at him – worried, concerned about him. For a moment, the mercenary thought that the woman was able to read the contents raging furiously through his mind. She walked over to him, placing her body before his for the man to land his hands on her shoulders as if trying to shelter him from his own anger. His chin barely touched her left shoulder – it was little; close to nothing, yet it was enough to help him breathe.

"The historical legend talks about a duel that took place right outside the saloon. Two men were fighting over the beautiful singer's heart and heated comments suddenly turned into a riot that only stopped when said men decided to take the fight outside – sadly, this story doesn't have a happy ending, I'm afraid," Matthew paused briefly to offer the group a concerned look, as if moved by the outcome of the dispute or maybe as if still giving his heartfelt condolences to the singer. "Both men, a kid who was barely fifteen years old back then, and the town's banker fired their weapons at each other; each of them receiving a certain death as the only result for such reckless behavior…"

Black remembered the night – the  _actual_  events that had taken place. Unable to hide his frustration any longer, the cowboy mercenary cursed under his breath; his eyes were filled with reproach and regret.

"Somethin' the matter, Mr. Black?" The guide inquired the second he noted Erron's uneasiness. "Mr. Black here is one of us – born and raised in Wickett…"

Black took a step backward as the doctor watched him in silence. He tried shaking his head as an attempt to dismiss the question, but all eyes were on him now and even when he hadn't been exactly talkative during the tour, it was obvious something about that place; something about that particular story was bothering him.

"That's not what happened," He said, regretting his words almost instantaneously.

The group was briefly distracted by the Asian woman as she suddenly began repeating the word "singer" and smiling unceasingly as if she was finally able to break the language barrier. But the diversion was quickly extinguished by the confused looks and bewildered glances shared by the rest of the group – even the doctor seemed intrigued by the words Black had said. Composing himself, the eternal cowboy locked eyes with the doctor as if holding on for dear life. Then he spoke with renewed patience.

"I heard a different story,” he said. “Yes, the duel did happen; at least that's what I can infer given the fact that both versions of the story begin with a duel, but those men didn't die that night." There had been no duel that night, he had simply tried to put Nathaniel in his place. That despicable bastard had slapped Amanda for no reason and the lewd comments about his mother had only helped ignite the fire burning deep inside. He knew he was supposed to keep it simple, vague even – yet his pride prevailed. "From what I heard, the kid was the singer's son and the banker was being rude to his mother. The kid reacted poorly, but they didn't die that night."

The doctor grinned quietly as she looked down. She didn't need any more details to understand the story she had just heard – Amanda's father was the banker, and Black himself was the singer's son.

A bit downhearted now that his tale had been disregarded by a complete stranger, Matthew wrapped up the story with an improvised conclusion and proceeded to indicate the group that it was time to get going again – the last stop in their journey was only a few blocks away, it was a place they all knew: the starting point of their tour that was also supposed to be their last.

Marching again, the doctor grabbed the cowboy by the shoulder and whispered: "I want the whole story. Just save it for the road… Still a long way to California." There were thousands of questions she wanted to ask him – about his mother, about life itself back then, about his youth and his nights at the saloon… As the gunslinger chuckled in response the woman felt a tinge of sadness taking over her at the realization that their time together was reaching its end. Many questions were bound to remain unanswered; many stories would have truncated endings.

"Just one more thing," the cowboy let out as he reached out for Matthew. "From what I've heard, the saloon's name was  _The wise bird_ , and the singer's name was not Jocelyn, it was  _Josephine_."

Raising a suspicious eyebrow, the guide asked: "You sure 'bout that?"

"I'm positive."

Retracing their steps back to the quiet town's central square, the group quickly gathered around the benches as Matthew beckoned them to get even closer. For both Black and the doctor, it became impossible to overcome the feeling that the only story left for the guide to narrate could either wrap them up in the warmest of whites or drag them down, right into the darkest pits of hells.

"The last tale I got to share with you tonight is probably one of my favorite stories ever. Generation after generation, everyone in Wickett knows about the eternal bride."

Even when the previous stories had been plagued by historical inaccuracies and vague references,  _her_  ghost was finally catching up to them now; grabbing them both by their hands as if trying to force them to pay attention. Black looked at Matthew, eyes fired up with his oldest uncertainty. He hadn't eaten that day, he hadn't slept; the closest approximation to actual sleep had been reduced to that bewildering dream he had had in the car… yet the clocks had stopped singing their undying tune, his spirit aflame. It was impossible; he could understand the logic behind such reasoning yet he could sense  _her_  near, as if hovering in the empty space separating his body from the doctor's, perhaps backing up his theory about the existence of a nearly mystical being created in the confines of his soul, meant to be his and his alone but in a plane he could never reach. Locked inside his memories. Alive in all her deaths, present everywhere and nowhere, pulsating through every thread of time and, simultaneously, pulsating through no thread at all.

"Her name was Amanda Black, but we all call her Mandy."

_Never Mandy._

"Little was known about her for the longest time. Truth be told, most of the things we learned about her, we learned them after she died, on January 21st, 1938."

_95._

_She lived for 95 years._

_Most of them, without him._

The revelation about her longevity, even if it could never be compared to his own longevity, felt like a wrecking ball mercilessly charging into him. The woman he remembered was sixteen – time and distance had positively paused her entire existence in an amber-colored trance for his memory to hold on to. But this old lady, this 95-year-old woman from the story was someone he could not bring himself to picture inside his mind. How her face must have changed over the years, how each feature adapted through time… he could not see it. He could not see  _her_. He had always kept the flame burning, wishing her a long and happy life – yet he had never dared to imagine her changing versions. It hurt every time he would even think about such shapes of hers, and it hurt because he hadn’t been there with her to see those changes with his own eyes.

"One day, in 1905, this woman just appeared, and she sat on one of these benches. And there she stayed, unable to leave the town's square. She was waiting for someone to come find her."

As she took a deep breath, Alexandra understood the imminent danger they were about to face: Black was about to hear the truth or a version of the truth that would eventually become the  _only_  version of the truth that could help him solve the puzzle of his missing past, and the outcome was most likely meant to destroy him.

"We don't have to stay," she whispered as she took his hand in hers. "I was wrong about this… let's go."

_Turn the car around, Alex. Let's go home._

But his eyes, already traveling far away for her, were casting the shadows of the only story that had never truly left him.

"Nobody knew who she was or why she was here. She became instantaneous folklore for this city the second she sat on that bench," Matthew said as he sat down on one of the benches as if trying to imitate the woman from the tale. "Years went by but she stayed. Always looking, always searching. She had become part of the landscape; she became a monument, a statue."

His coffee-colored eyes found hers but the silent bridge connecting them was simply too much for the woman as it now overwhelmed her, as much as the evident truth did: Amanda had spent her life waiting for Black to return; she had wasted her years chasing the memory of a man she was not destined to find and Black, trapped inside her memory, had done the exact same thing. As she looked down, she began to feel like crying. It was like opening his box of secrets for the first time all over again, yet each echo of his past was sadder than the last one; each new story was harder than the previous one.

"People would often say that she was sweet and kind, like a dystopic Penelope, anchored to a city that had nothing left to offer… Her story soared, inevitably, generation after generation. To anyone who would sit beside her on the bench, she would tell them that her name was Amanda Black and that she was looking for a soldier."

_A soldier…_

"She was madly in love with this man, but the war had separated them. She had searched everywhere for him, but she never found him so, defeated, she came back to the town that had seen their love and waited for him to come back. But he never did."

_A soldier…_

"Like a thief in the night, the Civil War had taken everything away from her. But still, she waited for a miracle that would never come her way. Years went by, her hair turned grey, but her hopes were still there, still waiting for her soldier to return home. Until she died, on that very same bench; alone. The time for hopes and dreams had passed her by."

Mustering her courage, the doctor wiped her tears and joined the guide on the bench. Destiny had been too cruel to the couple.

"You said you learned most things about her after she died. How come?" She asked.

"When she died and people addressed her as  _Amanda Black_ , the town's authorities tried to find her family or at least some distant relatives but they didn't find anyone. Amanda Black did not exist, at least, not in Wickett."

"What happened then?" Black's baritone voice disrupted the enchanting trance they were all in.

" _Houston_."

Feeling her heart beating wildly in her chest, like a stallion galloping madly in the night, the doctor stood up and joined Black, her eyes never leaving Matthew's.

"She was a beloved member of our community, so the authorities tried their best to find someone, anyone; even beyond the limits of our city. But Amanda Black didn't exist; there was no-one out there looking for her. Until one day, many months after her death, her ghost became real. They had found the only piece of evidence stating that she had ever existed in Houston, in the archives of the First Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Texas."

Terrified, the doctor realized Black had been right all along: they should have never returned to Wickett, she should have never tried to wake up the dead.

"The name  _Amanda Black_  appears in several entries of Elisabeth Neumann's personal journal. Neumann was a missionary back then, but her diary tells the story of a pregnant girl, _Amanda Black_ , a girl she rescued from the cold streets of Houston during the winter of 1860."

_Amanda ran away twice, boy…_

"According to Neumann's journal, Amanda gave birth to a girl named Harriet Black during that year, but she abandoned her baby a couple of months later, and that's where the story ends, sadly. That's the very last entry in Neumann's diary."

 _Harriet._ _Harriet Black._

"What happened to the child?" Black roared, charging at the guide and grabbing him by his shirt, completely blinded by the revelation. The doctor tried her best to pull him away from the man, but Black pushed her body backward, forcing her to keep her distance from them, forcing her to watch his sanity caving in.

He was a father. Had been a father.

The greatest love of his life had made him a father but she had never been able to find him – she had never been able to tell him.

"Nobody knows," Matthew begged. "Harriet, just like her mother, was a ghost. They never found her."

"Why would she abandon her own daughter?" Black yelled. "Why would she do that?"

"I don't know," the guide said as he shook his head helplessly.

_The First Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Texas…_

As the mercenary released Matthew from his grip, he took a step back and grabbed the doctor by one of her wrists. Standing now face to face, with his irises burning in the bonfire that was his past, he reached inside his jacket for the box – he handed her the money they still had and hid the box again underneath his clothing. His gun was still there; a loaded weapon for a broken man. He turned around and started to leave when he felt the doctor rushing behind him; her hands trying to hold on to him.

He stood in place, causing her smaller frame to bump into his. He didn't say anything to her, didn't have to. The fury inside his eyes was more than eloquent. He got on the car and drove off in the night as the doctor watched him, completely hopeless.


	45. The Real Folk Blues

Arc V

Chapter XLV

**The Real Folk Blues**

* * *

 " _I'm not going there to die; I'm going to see if I really am alive."_

Cowboy Bebop – Session 26

* * *

 Standing still, all alone and completely alien to the quiet voices narrating the very same bewildering events she had just seen with her own eyes, the doctor placed her arms across her chest and exhaled loudly. She wanted to be furious by Black's unexpected outburst; she wanted to feel the storm of anger and hate coming her way and washing her up in the darkest shades of irreverent despondency but the only thing left for her body to feel was the insufferable emptiness all around her, as it gradually began to consume her every thought.

She had felt the doubt grow stronger deep within her as the night progressed: perhaps she should have dug a little deeper before exposing the cowboy to a truth he wasn't even looking for. His absence had made it crystal clear for her: she had broken all boundaries with her carelessness. Not only she should have gathered more information about the eternal bride of Wickett; not only she should have listened when he said he didn't want to go back to his home town even when he hadn't listened when she told him she didn't want to go back to California in the first place.

She should have made sure that whatever was coming his way, it wasn't aimed directly at his heart.

It pained her in ways she could have never imagined. His plans and her plans were definitely not the same. The infamous law of nearly mystical balance,  _eye for an eye,_  could not be used as a valid excuse to save her from the gallows: he was only trying to help her find her way back into the family she had loved and lost but his family was long gone, there was no-one left for Erron to find, only the dusty memories of old graves and eternal ghosts he had never been able to bury in the cemetery of his soul.

How could she do this to him?

The cruelty of her actions, now vivid and unmistakably poisonous before her own stupefied blue eyes, seemed evident now. Erron had changed; the man who had tried to murder her in her sleep, the one who had left her all alone by the mountainside was gone and still, her carelessness hadn't hurt  _that_  man. She had hurt a softer version of him. A version of him that had rescued her from her own destiny, a warmer version of the coldhearted mercenary who had awoken feelings she had never dared to imagine she would ever be able to feel again.

Holding back the tears about to cascade down her cheeks, the doctor felt those hands landing on her shoulders. The touch was gentle; the pressure on her bones, subtle and welcoming. She turned around and fought her every instinct not to crumble down inside the guide's arms, so she quickly composed herself, overcoming the emotion.

Her expression stoic; she stepped away from Matthew as the guide asked if she was alright. She couldn't exactly say if the man was worried, or simply cautious.

"I'm not sure I understand what's going on… did you two fight or somethin'?"

His hands tried to reach out for her instinctively, yet his fingers froze in place before the woman. An awkward movement followed a clumsy motion for his hands to swing back and fall gracefully at the sides of his own body. A bittersweet half-smile adorned his face as the woman shook her head in silence.

"Your husband is…" Matthew paused briefly, careful not to hurt her. "He's quite…. Volatile."

Alex nodded, still choosing silence over the sound of her own voice.

"If you want, I could walk you to your hotel."

A puzzled look enraptured her cold face in the night. Whether the man was trying to be nice to her out of sympathy of gossipy curiosity was simply beyond her. Perhaps, she even dared to consider, he was already plotting a brand new Wickett myth for generations to come.

"It's not far from here, but since it's your first time in town and your husband's gone, perhaps you could use the company."

Tilting her head to the side, the woman examined her chances: she had no clue where the hotel was, and since she had never been to Wickett before, asking for directions and walking alone at night was not the best option. Matthew seemed harmless; perhaps his curiosity would bother her along the way, she considered, but questions couldn't kill.

"Fine," she finally breathed out, burying her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. According to Matthew, the hotel was only three blocks away from the square where they were still standing. "I feel like I should apologize for his behavior,” she said. “He's not a bad man, trust me, he's just… worn out from our trip and I think being back here is affecting him in ways I never thought possible. Perhaps I should have listened when he said he didn't want to come instead of being so pushy."

The guide shook his head in silence as his quiet whistle began to summon an old Texan tune. For a brief instant, the gentle melody made her feel as if words were truly beyond them until the sounds stopped, and Matthew took her hand in his as they walked.

"I can't blame him, dear. For most people, Amanda Black's story is a hard pill to swallow," the man shrugged his shoulders. "Even if most visitors only get a simpler, friendlier version of her story, it always seems to affect them all the same."

Alexandra sighed helplessly as she understood what the guide was trying to say: Matthew had only come clean about Amanda's mysterious child because Erron had coaxed him into telling him the whole story or, at least, the darker parts of a fractured story that Matthew had managed to put together throughout the years. Most people would never hear about the child, the doctor concluded bitterly. It was best to leave them all thinking about an impossible romance; about the nearly mystical nature of the tale hiding from their eyes the fact that they had lost more than just their hearts seeking a feeling they could never wholly possess.

"The story changed over the years," Matthew began to explain, "my great grandmother would always tell her daughter, my grandmother, about this young girl, also called Amanda; the broken bride. She wore a dirty wedding dress and her face was nearly disfigured. It was more of a legend, back then, meant to make sure girls would behave."

"They used her figure to scare young girls?" The doctor asked, bewildered.

Matthew shrugged once more as if trying to lessen the effects of those archaic ways being suddenly resurrected and brought back to the present by his indiscretion.

"They were trying to teach them a lesson about respect and faithfulness, especially in times of arranged marriages…" he clarified. "Apparently, this girl was married to a man she didn't love, thus the wedding dress. I have always assumed she wasn't a virgin by the time they tried to consummate their union; that would explain the beating," the guide paused briefly, as if lost in thought. "I think… I think for some people, their biggest mistake is not falling for the wrong person but being born in the wrong century."

His words felt like lashes going through her skin. Black belonged there, in his own time of saloons and Amandas, yet there was nothing he could do about that now and, furthermore, there she was, desperately clinging to his ancient body as if holding on for dear life. The crux of time was whimsical and fortuitous, she thought, it could force a modern woman just like her to try her best to keep him for herself, even when she knew he was not hers for the taking.

"Take my daughter, for example," the guide brought her back to reality as they both came to a halt before crossing the street. "None of that would have happened today; it's simply impossible. Can you conceive a story like that happening today?"

Alex shook her head in silent contemplation. Perhaps Amanda had been born in the wrong century after all, yet she couldn't stop thinking about that initial story she had just heard.

"So, she was in love with a man, but got married to another?" She finally managed to voice her thoughts feeling a little bit disappointed by Amanda's receding lights. Perhaps Erron had created a perfect woman inside his mind, nourished by the endless tourbillion of golden-colored memories of her; but maybe the real Amanda had been weaker than what the doctor had imagined. Maybe Amanda had been vulnerable, even child-like.

 _Child-like_.

She  _was_  a child.

"Then this woman, also called Amanda, shows up one day and she sits on a bench and starts talking about her missing soldier. Then she dies, and her name appears in the pages of an old journal back in Houston, revealing that she had had a child with that missing lover,” the guide said.

Just like Matthew had said only minutes ago, every story exiting his lips had been born in the cold facts of truth. Time had molded each tale, adorning them with plausible details and, sometimes, even bright, pinkish hues but the truth was still the solid foundation for each and every one of those stories to remain plausible enough to believe in them. In Amanda's case, the time had only been sustained as the necessary element for the concatenation of chapters to take place; shaping her entire history and making it whole from the torn pages of the several smaller tales that had placed her as the main protagonist all throughout her miserable existence.

"Now, if you were desperately in love with a man, pregnant with his child, but you find out that your family is never gonna accept him and, what's even worse, your family is already pushing you towards an arranged marriage… you know there's no place for your love child to be born under those circumstances, right?"

Alexandra nodded in silence, trying to bring her mind to imagine what it must have felt like for Amanda back then.

"What would you do?" Matthew asked, staring straight into her big, blue eyes.

"I'd leave."

They had reached their destination. The austere-looking building was expecting the troubled woman to walk through its door when the guide brushed her shoulder lightly and confessed: "I believe she left Wickett because she was searching for her soldier but she came back, years later, because she never managed to find him. Thinking it over, if he was a Confederate soldier…" A dark pause quieted the guide's words.

It wasn't necessary for the man to voice his thoughts. They were written all over his face.

The doctor braced herself as she readied her mind to say goodbye to the man and face the lonely hours ahead of her waiting for the mercenary to return. She sighed, nearly inaudibly, as she reached out to shake Matthew's hand – it was painfully obvious that the man was a strong believer of the theory stating that the soldier had died during the war but if only he knew that the young lover hadn't died back there, in the bloody battlefield. If only she could tell him he was still out there, broken by her and her stupid needs, chasing the ghosts of a past he could never fully recover.

As the woman smiled tenderly at him, Matthew walked with her and introduced her to the petite hotel owner, Rosalita. Unlike the woman they had met back in Delaware, Rosalita was warm and welcoming. She greeted the doctor and immediately made her feel as if she was actually happy of having guests around but besides Rosalita's impeccable predisposition towards her, Alexandra soon found herself realizing that Matthew was still there.

"Thank you for walking me to the hotel," she said. "I'll wait for my husband now."

The man moved closer, cupping her hands in his.

"I know, it's just… something… in the back of my mind," he seemed dubious, and his sudden weariness was making her nervous. "The way the story affected him; I would have never thought someone would react that way. I mean, I've seen people getting all flustered and overwhelmed by Amanda's tale but the way your husband acted…"

Alexandra bit her lip the second she saw his face being devoured by an unspoken doubt.

She could have lied to him, making him believe that Erron was a descendant. It would have been easy for her to come up with a story like that: maybe Erron was a descendant seeking truth and the truth he had found had made him snap. Nevertheless, she considered her chances: since the fate of Amanda's child was unknown, there was no way for Erron to be a descendant. Claiming a hierarchy would also mean that they knew things about the mysterious Amanda Black that no-one else knew, and that would expose him even further.

Choosing silence, the doctor crossed her arms over her chest and offered the man an innocent grin but still, she couldn't wrap her head around certain aspects of the story. It was obvious that, by the time they found the journal in Houston, the woman publicly known as Amanda Black was already dead. It was also easy to imagine that the journal had uncovered parts of her mystery, allowing them to connect the dots to finally link the old, ruined bride tale with the untold story of the stranger on the bench. But what about the baby? If Amanda left Wickett because she needed to find Erron and tell him that she was pregnant with his child, if she had loved him so much, why would she abandon their daughter; the only proof she had that the love they had shared had been real?

Sensing the storm inside her, the guide furrowed his brow.

"Just say it," he whispered.

The woman looked down instinctively. There was no way for her to speak what was on her mind; not without giving Black away. The guide smiled fondly at her and let his hands sink inside his pockets. Then he waved goodbye and turned around. Only then she finally let one of her hands reach out for him. Warm digits landing on Matthew's nearest shoulder, the doctor gazed up at him.

"What happened to the child?" She was desperate to know, yet she wouldn't let it show. "Is it true that you don't know what happened to the baby after Amanda left her?"

"Nobody knows."

The man lowered his voice as he retraced his steps, standing now only inches away from the doctor.

"The journal mentions a family, but I do believe they changed her name."

As he moved away from her, Alexandra stared at him with eyes full of surprise. If he was right, if Harriet's adoptive family had indeed changed her identity, Erron would never know a single thing about his daughter other than the fact that she had existed.

Closing the distance between them once more, Matthew explained: "This may be hard for such a young mind like yours to comprehend, but adopting a baby back then wasn't necessarily a good thing for a family to do. It wasn't considered a noble act. People would adopt babies in complete secrecy; it was shameful to be discovered… they would do anything in their power to deny the fact that their kids had been adopted, it was taboo," he took a deep breath. "That's why I'm positive of this: if that family adopted Amanda's baby, they must have changed her name."

His theory was surprisingly convincing. More than just plausible. It was coherent and absolutely realistic. Brokenhearted, the doctor looked down as the guide started to march away. Yet she stopped him again. There was one last thing that she needed to know; one last thing Black deserved to know.

"After she died, what happened to Amanda's body?" She whispered, nearly broken. "Where is she buried?"

"Wickett cemetery. Common burial."

The bride of Wickett, the greatest love of his life and the mother of his only child had been turned into yet another nameless anima for the mercenary to hold on to. Spiritless and anonymous, like an unwanted ghost reaching out in the night and doomed to spend eternity in the company of strangers.

As she watched the man leave, the doctor cursed herself through clenched teeth; the secrets she had uncovered had broken him and it had been her fault. Seconds later, just before entering the hotel, she heard the guide's hurried steps moving towards her again as the man ran as clumsily as can be to reach her. She turned around and accepted what he had to offer: an off-white business card with his personal information, yet she only took it out of plain courtesy.

"I was wondering… since your husband knows so much about the history of this place," Matthew began, rubbing his hands together as if trying to distract the woman from his sudden shyness, "maybe he can give me a call when he comes back?"

"We won't be staying long," Alexandra cut him off with a lifeless tone.

The guide nodded his head once and looked down.

"I thought he could sit with me and tell me a couple of things about the city, you know? Help me improve my stories…"

Even when she truly wanted to help him, Alexandra understood that there was no way in hell for Black to ever agree on doing such a thing. If anything, every detail and every hidden corner of that godforsaken town were bound to remind in the dark depths of his memory for intruders, just like her, to come to pry on them every once in a while and remind him of everything he had lost along the way.

"I'll make sure to give him your card, Matthew," she lied.

The guide tipped his hat at her as a broad smile eclipsed his nervousness.

"Are you sure you'll be alright, ma'am?" He insisted one last time. "I can stay and keep you company till your husband returns."

She simply shook her head, nearly apologetically.

"Well then, it was nice meetin' ya, Mrs.  _Black_."

The name resounded inside her head with such a venomous echo. The figure of the woman implied by that name was a mirage in a desert she wasn't sure she could walk away from.

"Likewise."

* * *

The journal, pressed hard against his chest, was not enough for the doctor to avert her eyes from the tremulous sight of blood contaminating his body. The crimson trails traveling down the sides of his face and impregnating his hands were powerful magnets, keeping her in place as the lone cowboy finally entered the room. His back against the door, the man's body slid down to the ground and there he stayed, his eyes too far gone to be reached by her concern. Carefully, he opened the box and placed the journal inside the container. The ancient book he had retrieved from the Houston archives would surely come to join the rest of the relics from his past – his Pandora box of memories, still waiting for him to return.

It was only obvious, she pondered. That book belonged to him. That book was a part of him, unexplored yet inaccessible and still, infinitely private.

Like a frightened animal, the woman kneeled before him and placed both her hands on his bloody temples. The cowboy moved his head just like a cornered, wounded beast. With a brave finger, she tried to summon his eyes by lifting his chin, but the man refused to get lost in that treacherous sight of hers. Eyes wide shut, he cast her away with nothing but silence.

She had imagined his body walking right through the door during the endless hours of his absence. She had pictured him broken, maybe even angry at her yet the polluted image of this seemingly empty man was slowly eating away at her. How could he look so fragile, when everybody knew he was to be feared? How could he look so small, when entire eras had managed to summon his vehement longevity? How could he look so lonely, when he had just discovered that Amanda had given birth to his child?

As Alexandra let the doctor overcome the woman, her fingers got busy trying to tend to his wounds but the sudden realization hit her with the strength of an unleashed hurricane: that blood tainting their worlds red was not his blood; the sad expedition to his motherland had surreptitiously taken them both back to the rightful places they had occupied back when they first met - the mercenary and the doctor were the only ones in the room. The cowboy and the whore were no more. Black and Alexandra were no more. As her eyebrows bridged together to conjoin a single gesture of irrefutable disapproval, the doctor allowed her hands to land on his thighs; eyes determined to brand him with renewed discord.

"What did you do?" She implored, but the man freed himself from her hands, rejecting her. His eyes went back to the box; his fingers tapping on the hard surface relentlessly, just as if his improvised percussion could animate the dusty lives of those beings that had perished long ago. As the unceasing beating caressed her ears, a single and solitary tear rolled off his face. He looked down; his gaze was now fixed on that box resting dearly beside him. The woman cupped his drumming hand with hers, trying to absorb the tension but he flinched under her unwanted touch, removing his hand immediately.

Only then his eyes met hers. The sight paralyzed her: he was broken; she had broken him.

Unable to dominate her own impulses for much longer, the doctor mustered her courage and opened the box. Her timid fingers tried to hold on to the journal yet Black quickly snatched it away from her grasp and pushed her apart, causing her body to land ungracefully on the floor, just a few feet away from him. Unprecedentedly ceremoniously, Black put the fragile book back inside the box – the woman could see the scattered dollar bills still resting inside the container and the gun, the same weapon he had given to her to be safe from all threats in case she should find herself trapped in a situation so perilous the solemn call of lead would be the only thing left to hear the doctor's cries for help. The metallic tip, coated in blood, was indicating that the device had been fired at close range, but her deduction was short-lived and quickly clouded by terror as the woman watched his body towering over hers, the weapon resting in his hand.

As a tremulous feeling of déjà vu crept over her, the woman propped herself up with her elbows and crawled backward, fruitlessly trying to escape the cold scrutiny of his stare.

It was the second time that the man was forcing her to take a look inside the barrel of a gun.

"How could you do this to me?" His lifeless voice ricocheted through the room. His eyes, bloodshot and terrifying, were devouring her diminishing shape.

"I didn't know," she repeated the words over and over again, but the man seemed unable to react. All he could see was the unmarred image of the one who had stolen the mysticism of his story; the one who had promised him answers but instead, had mercilessly locked him up in a maze of eternal questions. He kneeled before her; the constant threat embodied by the weapon between his fingers was still corrupting her sanity. A tedious smirk darkened his features as he let one of his hands touch the floor, just inches away from her shoulder.

 "Never mind the blood, dear. Mr. And Mrs. Black do not exist after all," he said as he painted her cheeks red with the crimson streams still running across his fingers. One knee touched the ground and the motion helped impulse the other knee forward.

The woman could feel the sudden pressure as he pushed his knee farther and harder between her legs. Her eyes were begging him to stop, yet the man only pushed harder than before, causing a foreign pain to take her up almost completely. She could feel his blazing anger aiming for her sex until he pushed her down, her back meeting the cold floorboards underneath her smaller figure. He used his free hand to keep her in place as his knee dug deeper – his unusual punishment was bringing back old memories she had thought lost to time: the painful days when irascible clients would suffocate her body with their frustration; their gruesome ways and their misplaced emotions, tarnishing her shape. She tried to shake herself out of the feeling, but his determination to hurt her was making it impossible for the woman to do so. She focused her attention on the sound of her own breathing and closed her eyes; her heaving chest seemed to find solace in the soothing music of her respiration, until the pressure became unbearable and she opened her eyes again, only to find his distinctive cold stare fixated on her weakened face.

Back to square one, or so it seemed. Back to the time when he was a ruthless killer and she was his hopeless prey.

Making an ulterior effort not to cry, the doctor finally managed to find her voice.

"The guide told me Amanda's buried in the Wickett cemetery; common burial," she said. "As for the child, he believes they changed her name when they adopted her. I'm so sorry, Black."

His lips became a tight line for the man to express his anger towards that woman, yet it wasn't enough for the doctor to silence the words leaving her mouth.

"Maybe Amanda thought that it was better for the girl to stay with her adoptive family."

Tears filled his eyes again and his determination seemed to be finally leaving him. He arched his back slightly as he removed his knee from in between her legs and sat on the floor before her. The wall of muscles and fury was finally giving way to the broken shadow of a man that he was now, the one enveloping her now in his own ancestral sadness.

She reached out for him instinctively as a warm hand cupped his shaken face. He looked down, as if ashamed, then buried his face in his own bloody hands and Alexandra caressed his head as she leaned in closer.

"We can go visit her grave in the cemetery. If you want to, of course," she whispered.

He couldn't discern her tone from the hundreds of voices coalescing inside his mind. Sounds of yesterday, in the agora of a bonfire that had been extinguished long ago, and still, chasing after him with the virulence of an unspoken truth. The realization hit him painfully then: he had been there before, during the seventies – his last time visiting Wickett. Back then, he had put roses on his mother's grave then he had walked amongst the many tombstones, looking for Amanda's. He had walked by her anonymous grave countless times, always ignoring her, even when he wasn’t trying to. He had been too naïve to think that she had been carefully kept amongst her beloved ones; the ones she had surely found through the years, the ones keeping her company for all eternity. The truth had been placed way too far from his fantasies. The truth was hostile and uncaring; just like the man he had become.

" _Amanda ran away twice, boy…"_

Nathaniel's voice, the embodiment of his resentment, was slowly washing over him and making him see the world a shade darker than before. Even the pained doctor, staring back at him with caring eyes and genuine concern, was not enough to suffocate that unwelcomed voice resonating all around him. Now he understood why she had left her father and her husband twice – now he  _knew_ , but it was much too late.

Unable to walk amongst the many ghosts of his turbulent past in the chaotic parade of broken souls going on all around him, Black sentenced his ire with a poisonous hand, lingering in the space between their bodies. The doctor eyed him suspiciously, already moving apart, trying to avoid the incoming attack. Yet the mercenary couldn't bring himself to harm her – his hand stopped mid-air as if he was completely unable to touch her, as if he was beyond all touch, as if he was beyond all humanity.

She caught his unmoving hand in hers and squeezed gently until his knuckles turned white. Then she went back to the exact same spot she had occupied before his sudden outburst and let her forehead rest against his agitated chest.

"During the carnival, I asked you what was keeping you alive," she whispered, "I think this is it, Erron." Blue met a strange and darkened shade of brown as the woman finally found the strength to walk upon the broken bridge between them. "You couldn't leave this world without knowing this… after all these years, Black, how could you leave this world without knowing that you had a child with her? You created life."

What she failed to say was that the remainder of his existence had now been reduced to a fragile parenthesis of nothingness for the troubled cowboy to purge his rotten soul from his own sins and the sins that others had inflicted upon him. What she failed to mention was that the rest of his days had now been secluded in the sad hourglass of a father that could never meet his daughter.

Harriet was gone, just like everyone he had ever loved and God, he loved that child. That unknown, unreachable, completely anonymous little baby girl. Beyond all pain, all anger, all fury – there was only love. God, he loved her. He loved his daughter. He loved her with an intensity that he had never felt before; he loved her with an urgency he had never experienced before.

But still, what she failed to tell him was that from now on, his tired mind would get lost in the endless puzzles of seemingly familiar faces. He could be a grandfather, a great grandfather, his name could be an entire family but, simultaneously, he would always be completely alone. He would search amongst strangers for that peculiar nose or those unforgettable eyes; the task exhausting and pointless. He pressed her head against his chest and let the storm take over as he cried like a helpless child. The woman could feel his teardrops getting lost in her black hair as her hands cradled him tenderly, rocking him like a baby.

"She lived 95 years…" He sobbed, helpless and inconsolable. "She waited for so long… it's like time was trying to punish her as well." The doctor held on him tighter than before, she could see the pieces of his broken heart bleeding out before her. "She lived such a shitty life, poor thing... And she had to endure for so long when we could have been together, if only she had told me, we could have been…"

"Happy."

She had only wanted to give him closure. The kind of closure he needed. The kind of closure their story deserved. She had only wanted him to be able to finally break free from the chains of his past. Now there he was, breaking down inside her arms, his pain exposing him bare and completely helpless.

His sudden, disquieting movements caught her attention.

As he stood up and walked back to the door where he picked up the box again, her incredulous blue eyes observed as the man opened the container and grabbed the journal. Far from sharing the ancient words written on its yellowish pages with her, he simply absorbed each line with unprecedented devotion. Then he placed the book back inside the box and closed the container. Black walked back to her and kneeled before her, extending both his hands for the woman to finally take possession of the precious box. His hands balled up to create tight fists the second the container abandoned him yet his eyes, already waving goodbye, unmatched the fury contained within his hands.

She didn't have time to open the box.

Didn't have time to reach for that journal.

The man lowered his head as darkness took hold of his face. His mind went back to the cemetery, to the image of that sea of nameless people where his beloved Amanda was swimming in now. How could he bring his old and tired bones to visit her grave now? How, when he had already walked past her grave, ignoring her every time? Figments of his imagination were already talking about a multiplicity of bones, all tangled up together in the same hostile bonfire. Her bones, amongst the rest, were nothing but just another reason for the mercenary to regret his past decisions. He should have never left Wickett, he should have never left her. He should have done everything in his power to make sure the greatest love of his life would not end up becoming dust far from the warm embrace of his own bones.

In the reflection of his nightmare, he saw himself becoming fragments of the man he should have been. Each portion of him, challenged by a fragment of the man he had become – he realized he was nothing but incompletion; a recondite question no-one could answer. But the thing that frightened him the most was the cruel realization that not all his fragments were the same. There were sadder fragments and more violent ones. There were bittersweet fragments mixed up with more sensual ones. But there was one fragment, one particular portion of his shattered self that was powerful enough to stop the beating of his heart.

In one of the fragments, he was a completely different man. In one of the fragments, he hated Amanda.

" _Amanda ran away twice, boy..."_

Black tried to wipe away the tears streaming down his face, but the task quickly became pointless and repetitive. The fragment was still pulsating right through him, it would chase him through the darkness, and it would extinguish all light. But as hard as he tried to push the thought aside, that small portion of him remained persistent in its efforts: a part of him, after the revelations of that night, had grown resentful of the woman he had loved.

A part of him now hated Amanda.

A part of him could never forgive her for having abandoned their daughter, even when he could understand the reasons that had motivated her decision.

_"Amanda ran away twice, boy. The first time she escaped it had only been a few months after their marriage. I don't know what she was expecting to do, a brat with no money, good luck with that. I thought she had found you, but then she came back. Don't blame me for your own shortcomings, kid. If you hurt her and she chose to return to the place where she belonged that's on you."_

"She never found me!" Black screamed, bringing back Nathaniel's voice inside his head yet answering to no-one at all.

_"When she returned, she had changed. It pained me to see that look on her eyes, of complete frustration. So I stood up for her. I quieted their voices by telling people that she had gone seeking a cure for her husband. I did my best as a parent, boy: she needed time, I gave it to her. Can you imagine the things they said about her? That she was a cold-hearted bitch, capable of abandoning her dying husband. That she was a whore, your whore. I knew she would come back; I always knew you weren't man enough for her. I knew she couldn't stay with you: you were a soldier, you had nothing left to lose, you wanted to die but she… she had everything to lose. And she's always been a coward. The second she smelled the danger, she was back. Then she ran away a second time; the barber was dying, and the accident had crippled me – suddenly she had become a slave for us. Can't really blame her for running away that second time though, her mother had filled her head with tales of princesses and eternal, tragic love. She woke up one morning and we had turned her into a nurse."_

As the doctor watched him fall apart, too far gone to be reached by her concern and moving dangerously closer to his own convoluted past, the woman put the box on the ground and wrapped her arms around his trembling frame. This time, he didn't even have the energy to push her away. He allowed his forehead to rest on her nearest shoulder; his lifeless arms were hanging aimlessly at the sides of his own body.

"How could you do this to me?"

He lifted her chin for the woman to stare into his eyes.

"How could you?"

Something in his eyes had changed. She had only intended to help him, but she had broken him. Black pressed her body against his own, only for the woman to feel what he was actually trying to do: the tip of the gun was caressing his torso, aiming for his own heart. His trembling hand had wrapped itself around hers, directing her fingers to the cold scrutiny of the trigger.

He wanted her to end him.

"If you were trying to punish me for all the things I've done to you…" His voice was soft and weak, but the serenity he had found inside those words was unsettling for the doctor. Remembering what had happened the last time their hands had found communion in the black spirits of a weapon, she tried her best to break free from his embrace, but the man only pushed her closer. His finger was challenging hers, pressing more and more until she finally broke down and cried on his shoulder.

"No…" she whispered, brokenhearted.

"Why not? You've already killed me."

Fighting her way out of his grip, the woman shook her head vehemently and threw the gun away with her free hand and Black watched the cold metal as it landed on the floor. The woman launched her body towards his and contained him completely in her warm embrace, burying his face in her stomach and wrapping her arms around his back and shoulders.

"We don't do this anymore, Erron," she said, "we are not those people anymore… we don't treat each other like this." The lump in her throat became an unbearable burden for the woman to carry. The crux of his pain was becoming more and more unstable and she was the only anchor left for that relic of a man to stay afloat.

"We don't treat each other like this…" he found himself repeating her last words. "We've always treated each other like this."

"There were times when you were nice and sweet," she said, remembering their conversation the night of the carnival. "And each time you tried to reach for me I acted like a bitch. Just like it was in the beginning when every time I'd try to reach out to you, you would tell me off and behave like a total dick." She stared at the gun in the distance then directed her reddened eyes back at him. "Why can't we be good for each other at the same time, Black?"

Her heartfelt words triggered something inside of him; a second fracture slowly beginning to toy with his already wounded pride. The pain he was in was blinding him, but their goodbye was still imminent. Earthrealm had succeeded. Earthrealm, once again, had taken everything away from him.

"There's no more time for us to be anything," he sentenced coldly as he stood up and took off his jacket. "I'm taking you to California tomorrow, first thing in the morning."

She heard the water running in the shower and motioned towards the bathroom. Leaning her body on the doorframe, she took a deep breath before whispering: "You don't have to do this. If you hate me so much, if what you say is true, if I have killed you, then you can go, Black. Leave me here, I won't follow you. Go back to Outworld and I'll make my own way back to California."

He turned around for the woman to appreciate the rivulets of blood traveling down his shoulders but still in place, as if unable to touch her, the mercenary closed his eyes minutely as he sat on the cold bathroom floor.

"I didn't kill him,” he confessed, “the guard in Houston." His eyes found hers but he quickly looked away. "I just knocked him unconscious, I couldn't kill him. Even though Mr. and Mrs. Black don't exist, I couldn't do that to you. There were plenty of witnesses who could testify against you; the couples that were with us during the tour, even Matthew. I can cross the portal and be gone, granted, the problem is not gonna chase after me… But it could lead them straight back to you, and I couldn't let that happen."

The woman moved closer to him and sat down beside him, yet the man moved away from her. He stood up again, one hand brushing her shoulder.

"I need to take you to California myself. Now more than ever… I really need to see you go."

As the woman cupped her face with her hands, the cowboy took off the rest of his clothes and stepped into the shower as if she wasn't there at all.

"You should have left me to rot in the brothel," he heard her say as he closed his eyes. "I still don't understand why you always had so much faith in me – ever since you found me, I've always let you down."

She waited for an answer that never came. Only his silence answered her in the night. The sound of his sadness. The sound of the end.


	46. The Laws of Ferocity

Arc V

Chapter XLVI

**The Laws of Ferocity**

* * *

 " _But I fear I have nothing to give; I have so much to lose."_

Sarah McLachlan – Fear

* * *

It all became a supernova when it exploded.

At first, it was white – the immaculate color that encompasses everything and nothing at the same time. Then it became warmer, hotter, scorching even; painting his world yellow and orange until the charred ashes of his past evolved into a bloody red. Then it faded, slowly decreasing its iridescent intensity; quickening nothing, enlightening nothing, moving fast and dangerously close to a darker shade.

Then it was black.

Not as in the perfect sky during a calm night, for he knew their sky had never been perfect. Far from it, its total darkness had been polluted by the smoke and the fire brought by memories he could not repel. The stars in their sky had faded millennia ago; their incandescent glimmer was nothing but an elaborate tale, a vacuous illusion fooling his eyes, making him see their glorious shapes even when they were there no more.

But white, again, as if fighting the dark whirlpool of endless chaos was now crucial to his senses, came to his aid. Its pristine wings wrapped him up with surreptitious candor for the pieces and shards of the broken supernova to finally rest. His bones gave up as his muscles struggled with each spasm but, in the end, it overcame him. Fast and heavy he closed his eyes, his numb mind too far gone from this land, and there he stayed, on a bed that felt strangely comfortable and in a room that wasn't his; in a town that had never fully belonged to him but still seemed determined to keep him around.

White returned, albeit briefly, when he opened his eyes again. A weaker shade of coffee welcomed him into a world that now looked a little bit paler than before, a little bit colder. Now he could see it with his own tired eyes; now he could define it and redefine it with words: meaningless and futile, the sadistic nature of the realm had coated his skin in a dull grey he could never wash away. This brand-new universe in the middle of all blacks and all whites was meant to become his new colorless vision – it would forever stay that way; his coffee-colored eyes could see no color at all. That was the real mark that this cruel world had branded on his skin; the lackluster dissonance in which he would spend the rest of his existence.

He rubbed his eyes carelessly before adjusting his vision to the mundanity of that room but no matter how hard he tried to regain his missing colors, it all remained grey. All of it. Every corner, every detail, every single piece of furniture breathing life into that small and private world they were momentarily living in. He moved on the bed and looked out the window: the canopy of furious clouds rolling their way over town was breathtaking. He exhaled, consumed by the sight, yet he couldn't help but grace his face with a bittersweet smirk: even the sky had turned grey; grey as the shadows closing in on him and anticipating the night. He looked down, abashed and disheartened yet his broken smile remained the same.

For he knew their sky had never been perfect.

As the mercenary got out of bed, his body already feeling the repercussions of his visit to Wickett cruising relentlessly across his skin, he looked over his shoulder and acknowledged the messy room: the symptoms of his fury were now displayed all over the place. The broken glasses and bottles, the sweaty sheets and the bloody towels discarded carelessly on the floor. They were in for a quick checkout, or so it seemed. His unexpected reaction during the tour, the wounded guard and the missing journal back in Houston were now in perfect concordance with the chaotic room. He sat on the floor, arching his back and allowing his chin to touch his bare chest – the headache was still there, as certain as the pressure on his battered neck, as if subtly telling him that the weight of the world was on his shoulders now yet the message was unclear and unprecedentedly uncanny: the world was not asking him to be a hero; it was not asking him to be anything, anything at all.

He covered his face with his hands and rubbed his cheeks vigorously. The texture of his skin had become rough to his own touch. His cold fingertips could not summon his own humanity. He could see her legs through his fingers, moving aimlessly around the room – those long, pale towers still exposing the signs of a frightening past she had had to endure all on her own.

He removed his hands from his face.  It was hard not to stare.

She was moving around the room with nothing but her underwear on. One swift movement after the other, it was simply impossible not to stare.

The doctor walked back to the bathroom and discarded the wet towel that was covering her hair, but his eyes wandered back to the messy room, leaving the woman alone again. As soon as she closed the door, the monotonous sounds coming from the hairdryer kept him company for about twenty minutes then she exited the bathroom again, her pace calmer than before; her body now covered by the same garment that she had worn ever since leaving Outworld: the same old black shirt that, according to his sense of fashion, was simply too long to be a t-shirt and too short to be a dress.

His meaningless thoughts evaporated from his mind the second she got closer to him, kneeling a few inches away from his body. She extended one of her arms, reaching out to him, yet his eyes could not look away, not now that he was finally noticing the change: she had dyed her hair. His coffee-colored eyes clashed against the ancient auburn of his past.

"You're up… finally," she said softly, even when she could see the storm gathering inside his stupefied eyes. "I'm sorry I left you alone this morning but you were sleeping like a log so I thought you wouldn't even notice."

Only then he finally moved, allowing one of his hands to reach out and touch that bonfire challenging his thoughts. But as his fingers ran through her hair, his expression only darkened. The woman stood up and quickly busied herself folding her jeans and placing them on the bed. Black craned his neck, his eyes unable to leave her.

"There's a very nice hair salon just around the corner. You don't have to worry; it wasn't that expensive," she said as she motioned towards the petite coffee table placed under the window where Black's box was resting. The doctor opened the box but instead of going for the precious journal, she busied herself with the rest of the money, counting every bill to make sure the mercenary would still have plenty of money during his journey back to Delaware. Satisfied, she smiled quietly to herself before turning around to meet his gaze once more – still on the ground, his eyes were having a hard time trying to look away.

"Guess you're finally acting like a real wife," Black breathed through parted lips, "your man's broken down here and you're busy spendin' his money on your hair…"

She knew better than to fall for such simple, empty accusations.

With a motherly smile on her lips, the doctor crossed her arms over her chest and furrowed her brow: Black's reaction regarding her looks was the last thing on her mind. The real repercussions of their time in Wickett were still lingering between them; the true extent of the facts they had uncovered was reason enough for the woman to worry about that man.

But that wasn't all.

Their journey through America was taking longer than expected, and even when she knew it was a problem he was supposed to deal with on his own, she couldn't help but wonder what would happen to the mercenary in the near future: what was he going to say to his superior as an attempt to justify his unexpected absence? Were they just going to let him go back to work or was he now an unemployed man? What good could ever come from such a thing? A mercenary without a boss, a gunman as skilled as Back, even if going through hell, still needed a solid structure in order to function, especially in a social environment that wasn't even his.

Would he be able to keep the storm inside?

The countless lies he was surely going to come up with in order to keep his job were placed way beyond the limits of mere speculation. They were going to become as fragile or as solid as his capability to hide from their eyes everything he had discovered during his stay in Wickett. He could not say a single thing about his daughter; he could not exteriorize his compromised feelings regarding Amanda. Granted, he had never been one to socialize; letting others in and opening up to people had never been his forte. She knew that. She had learned that the hard way but still, she couldn't help but worry. Her concern, transfixed on her face and crystal clear inside her eyes, was reason enough for the troubled gunslinger to get on his feet and walk up to her. With a minimum caress, he allowed his index finger to travel the contour of her face before his hand could land on her shoulder. Cold fingers spiraled through her hair, his eyes never leaving hers.

"Don't worry about me," Black whispered, "after everything you've done to me, I honestly find that insulting."

In his eyes, she was the reason why he was feeling so broken inside. And the fact that their goodbye was imminent was only making things worse.

"For the last time, Erron, I didn't know."

He pulled her hair slightly before releasing her.

"I don't care. Not anymore."

Something in the way he said those words was making her feel as if the man who had finally opened up to her was now gone for good. She scratched her chin as she sat down on the bed: there were only a few things she could say to him if she truly wanted to make amends.

"I'm sorry."

She had said those words a million times already, yet his anger and his troubled state of mind had always prevented the man from accepting her heartfelt apologies. It was true that she wasn't the one to blame for the debts of his past but now all those debts had migrated to his present and, according to him, she was the only one to be held responsible for such sad turn of events. Just as she had expected, the mercenary simply shrugged his shoulders and turned his back on her; then he motioned towards the window and explored the stormy outside with eyes that had seen more than enough.

"Why are we still here?" Chills ran down her spine as Black's lifeless voice reached her ears.

"You needed to rest," the woman offered, as she tried her best to break the clinical barrier of her answer. She tried to speak to him as a friend, as someone who's genuinely concerned. She tried to speak as the woman who was now supposed to be with him, the one supposed to have his back even when she was having a hard time trying to find herself in the colorless redoubts of his heart. The depths of his pain had seemingly erased her from his emotions; it was hard to remember that less than a week ago that very same man was holding her dearly in his arms.

As she pressed her legs against her stomach and enveloped her knees with her arms, she watched him in silence as the man picked up his belongings one by one.

"Let's get goin'. I don't wanna stay in this town."

She closed her eyes and exhaled loudly before answering, as if anticipating his reaction.

"I won't drive until the storm is over," she said.

He cursed through clenched teeth as he walked to the bathroom and back to the bed, where he found her jeans. Then he stood right in front of her and threw the garment her way. She could see the determination inside his cold eyes; the sight was frightening but still, she didn't even flinch when his shadow towered over her, his arms now crossed over his chest, his left foot tapping incessantly against the floor.

"Fine by me. I'll drive."

She needed to get through to him, needed to make him see that the darkness surrounding them now was not the ending that she had in mind for them.

"I said I'm sorry, Black," she insisted as she finally stood up, "and I told you: you don't have to stay with me, you can go on my own."

His cynical laughter was the last thing she was expecting to hear. She knew the sound too well – it was bittersweet and menacing, rich yet vacant, as if deprived of all actual joy. As the sound ricocheted through the room, summoning her fears one by one, the woman took a deep breath and walked up to him. They moved in tandem until his back met the door, his obscure eyes were finding their delight in her fragility: no matter how determined she seemed to be, deep down he knew that with just one roar of his baritone voice, he could bring her to her knees.

But he didn't roar.

As she shadows moved past him, his face bare and exposed now, he had no choice but to see the one standing right in front of him for who she truly was: the woman he remembered, from over a decade ago. The same one who had resurrected the ones he had loved; the same one he had tried so hard to protect from the dangers of an alien world about to devour her completely.

She was back. She, the one he had been dying to see for so long now. But now, exactly like back then, she was scandalously late.

When he saw himself cornered by the real Alexandra, he closed his eyes and shied away from her image. But the only things that became visible then were the shadowy figures from his dream, wrapping her up in their embrace and taking her away from him for good.

_Turn the car around, Alex. Let's go home._

He couldn't forgive her, as much as he wanted to. She had broken each one of the seals keeping his past locked. She had unleashed the beast, had walked hand in hand with the only woman he had ever loved and had successfully turned his love into hate. But when he opened his eyes, trying to escape the shadows revolving all around them, she was still there, stoic and whole; right and wrong at the same time. Inherently his, yet infinitely foreign.

He had to break her, destroy her if necessary. That was the only way to finally let go without the impending fear of clinging forever to everything that might have been. That was the only way for him to say goodbye to that woman and never look back.

His fingers went back to her hair as his cold stare examined her face – every subtle change in her demeanor, every alteration to her otherwise unpreoccupied expression. Her gestures were convincing; she was finally able to preconceive the words he had yet to say. As if preventing the incoming attack, the woman chose honesty.

"It was the least I could do for my family."

The message was clear but still, it had bathed him in surprise.

"The woman I am now is so different from the one they remember… The lies I'm gonna have to tell them, the things I'll have to keep from them… The least I could do for them was to try and give them the woman from their memories, even if only in a shallow and superficial way."

The fighter was no more. She had finally accepted her fate and was actively acting on it.

Black looked down as he silently agreed with her: Outworld had reshaped the Alexandra they had once known; this woman returning now was a complete stranger and, in time, they were surely going to notice. Still, her gesture was pure and profoundly linked to the very essence of her nature – she had always been the one who worries and cares, the one that looks after those she holds dear, patiently watching over them.

He himself had been there more times than he could count, sheltered by her protection, safe inside her arms even when he had hurt her, and she had hurt him back in return. Such small acts of revenge had never been enough to positively tear them apart.

Until now.

Touched by her sincere words, he decided to join her. At first, the words were clumsy and inconclusive, almost as if refusing to leave his mouth. Then his thoughts became crystal clear, making the old gunman feel at ease inside the limits of his own honesty.

"I can't accept your apologies, Alex," his tone was low, nearly weakened by his state. "I don't blame you for the events of my past, I can't do that; I know you were not the one who abandoned Amanda and you didn't know about the baby girl, I honestly believe you didn't know. But when you say I couldn't leave this world without knowing… that's the part I'm not so sure of. And that's what I can't forgive."

He squeezed her shoulders gently and made room for his tired feet to walk around the woman.

"News like that… that’s supposed to change a man's life. But my life ain't gonna change, Al. There's nothin' I can do about it: there’s nothin' to do, nowhere to go, no-one to ask," he made a brief pause as he looked down, the lump in his throat making it hard for the man to continue. "She's long gone, Alex. My girl's long gone. I can't do shit about it, all I can do is wonder what could have been and regret every decision I ever made – you gave me somethin' I didn't need to have; made me see somethin' I didn't want to see… you had no right. If I could, I would erase it from my mind."

"How can you say something like that?"

He had fought his treasured memories for so long that now the hurricane caused by the unknown side of his past was finally defeating him.

"They say that ignorance is bliss, Al…" He said as he stepped away from her. "I believe they're right."

She stared at him with eyes full of disbelief. Even when she could understand the meaning of his words, it was hard for the woman to fully embrace what he had just said. The love he had felt for that woman, the nearly fundamental news he had just heard…

"Everything was my fault back then," he acknowledged as he lowered his head once more. "I chose to leave town when I should have stayed right by her side. I should have done more than just watch her go and marry someone else."

As she watched him struggling with his pain again, she couldn't help but wonder why he had decided to carry the weight of the world all on his own. Perhaps it was easier that way, she pondered, maybe it was better to preserve the image of that ideal, immaculate woman from his past – the one he had crafted inside his imagination, the one who had kept him company all over the years in the ethereal shape of a perfect yet hurtful memory for the eternal cowboy not to feel so all alone. Yet it wasn't enough. She couldn't just watch him succumb to such ancestral pain knowing that the responsibility should have been shared. Ideally perfect or not, the  _real_ Amanda had made mistakes too.

The woman bit her lower lip before speaking. She knew that what she had to say was the last thing he wanted to hear – Black had been in denial for so long that the mere thought of shattering that idyllic illusion of the lovely girl back home was more than just cruel but, still, it had to be done.

"You were not the only one who made mistakes, Erron, and you know it."

Perhaps now she could finally understand why he was constantly comparing her to Amanda: as flattering as it was for the woman to admit that Black was comparing her to the greatest love of his life, maybe he wasn't exactly trying to portray her as the image of sheer perfection but as this weakened being, seemingly forced to have her path intertwined with his, prisoner of her own shortcomings and destined to watch him make the same mistakes over and over again.

A minuscule gesture of disdain took over him and obscured his face minutely – as if anticipating the true tenor of the words he was about to hear, the gunman raised both hands, trying his best to keep the woman quiet but she simply held his hands in hers and directed them back to the sides of his own body.

"She was in love with you, but she married someone else. She  _chose_  to marry someone else and then…"

"It wasn't that easy back then," he cut her off, almost infuriated by her simple assumptions. "It wasn't a matter of choosin' – she did what she had to, she did what she was _supposed_ to do."

"What I'm trying to say is that you are not the only one to blame, Erron," she tried to calm him down before his fury could blind him again yet his austere gestures seemed innocuous now, as if the man had finally been detached from all common sense and was now moving dangerously towards a state of mind so empty it could only drag him further down the black tourbillon taking control of his emotions. "You  _both_  made your choices, right or wrong, you both did… and you both got hell to pay for each and every single one of them."

It was hard seeing him like that, and it was even harder to remember the man who had held her in his arms less than a week ago. An invisible barrier was now keeping them apart but still, as the man glued his back to the door and covered his face with his hands, her fingers moved near him, landing on his forehead and slowly sliding their way down his shoulders. She squeezed gently, mimicking his previous gesture, but the effect was not the same. Feeling cornered by her concern and her kindness, the cowboy shied away from her once more, rejecting her and her fragile collection of good intentions.

"What do you expect from someone like me?" He breathed. "Someone so corrupted, so polluted, so powerless."

She moved away from him and went back to bed. As she woman searched deep within her for the right words to say to him, she realized there was nothing more to say: he was surprisingly comfortable inside that pain, it was as if he had been waiting for it, certain it would come his way sooner or later.

He would never let go of his past.

He didn't  _want_  to.

The closure she had tried to offer to him had been compromised from the very beginning. She had been trying to free a man that didn’t want to be free.

She covered her face with her hands as she exhaled loudly; as obstinate and stubborn as he was, he was finally dragging her down along with him and the depths of his own personal hell were powerful enough to shatter her into thousands of pieces.

"Maybe it's just a story," the doctor considered as she shook her head, the crescendo in her voice matching her desperate need to make him see that even if he couldn't change the past, that didn't necessarily mean he was now supposed to live a life of regret. "You heard the rest of the stories: they were vague, the details were wrong…"

" _Just a story_ ," he began, despondently, as the shadows returned to his face, exposing the roots of his anger. "It's  _my_  story!" He finally exploded as he punched his own chest, unable to dominate the beast dwelling inside of him and she stayed right where she was, knowing all too well that his choleric outburst could harm her beyond repair. Still, she watched him one last time, as he put on his jacket and picked up his belongings, determined to leave. He looked over his shoulder as soon as he was ready and signaled the woman to get on her feet.

"You and I are not so different after all, I guess you were right," the doctor whispered as she put on her jeans and her shoes, "first the marks on our bodies, now this. We both lost two kids…"

"It's not the same," he said as he grabbed her by the arm, digits buried into her skin and eyes about to devour her. "I  _did_  have a daughter. You  _chose_  not to."

He knew his words were vicious enough to break her. He knew that he didn't have the right to imply such a thing and yet, in his mind, he understood that in order to say goodbye to that woman he was bound to go to such extraordinary lengths. It would be easier that way; there was not a single doubt inside his mind: he was still trapped inside a past he could not recover, he couldn't afford to create yet another mystical creature for his memory to punish him. Now that he was about to take her home, it was better to go on their separate ways with nothing but resentment. It was the  _only_  way - going down the hard way and entertaining their minds with furious thoughts instead of facing a life filled with uncertainties where the other is no more.

Still disturbed by his words, the woman took a step backward and released her arm from his tight grip. She could see through his intentions; she could sense what he was trying to do. She was supposed to play the part of an indolent doll for him to exteriorize all those feelings he had been bottling up for ages, even if that meant surviving the brutal lashes of his unprecedentedly cruel honesty.

Eyes fixed on the vicious man staring back at her now, the doctor endured the brimstone inside his imperturbable gaze with a defiant look: that wasn't the way she had pictured their last hours together would be like, and in the back of her mind she couldn't help but regret her most recent decisions. She had successfully delayed their goodbye, but at what cost? Her hand tried to reach out for him as the gunman turned around; his hand already on the doorknob. Fingers holding on to his neck and moving fast across his back were all he needed to forget about the door and take a look over his shoulder: he knew that candor in her eyes, he had seen it before, like some sort of a twisted second-nature gradually taking hold of her.

"Don't," Black sentenced coldly. "It's over."

He didn't remove her hand – didn't have to.

"Whatever we had in the past; it's over now."

The man crossed his arms over his chest, balancing the car keys in his finger. She had given him exactly what he wanted: a spark that could keep the fire burning, the heat rising; for the flames of his anger to damage their bond permanently.

It was painful.

To consider their last hours together as a combination of madness and fury all in order to entertain the mind and the heart and answer to the laconic predicament of a life without each other.

"I see you, you touch me, and all I can think about… all I can picture in my head is you… with others," his slow diction and the disdain he had imprinted in each one of his words he had chosen were enough to make her see that it was truly over; that whatever it was they had shared, no matter how brief, now belonged in the past.

He knew what to say and when to say it.

He knew that those words still cut deep.

He knew that what she had had to endure in order to survive a decade on her own was still a conflict she could not escape from, especially now that the return of the relegated boyfriend was an imminent reality.

There was a part of him that wanted to hurt her just to push her away for good, securing a lonely future where he was not meant to miss her and vice versa. But there was also another part of him that wanted to hurt her out of pure jealousy: Amanda and his daughter were distant ghosts he could never recover but her loved ones were just around the corner, waiting for her to return.

"What are you gonna tell him when you see him?"

He knew Nathan could never accept a whore. Knew he himself could never accept a whore.

"Are you gonna tell him? Or are you gonna tell him what you really did all these years?"

As the woman looked down, he could finally see the seed of his own discord growing deep inside of her. Tremulous shadows eclipsed her face yet the sadness in her eyes was a luxury she couldn't afford to show – not to that man. He lifted her chin with a cold finger and trapped her jaw in his hand the second she tried to look away.

"Are you gonna tell him how ironic it is that you could never have the only man you actually wanted to fuck?" He leaned in closer, whispering in her ear. "Are you gonna tell him that ever since I found you that day you stopped sleeping with others? Are you gonna tell him that you could never be a whore with me?"

A bittersweet smirk took over her features: no matter how poisonously true his words were, the truth was that she knew he had only accepted to work in the brothel as a desperate attempt to have her near and to make sure no other man would ever visit her bedroom.

"You are a coward," she said, freeing herself from his hand. "You are only telling me these things because the worst is yet to come: Wickett's been hell and California is not going to be any better."

She stole the car keys from his hand and pushed him aside.

"Do you honestly believe that California is gonna be worse than this?" He asked, nearly laughing. "California is where you resume your life as if nothing happened, honey."

She marched on, without looking back.

"California is where I leave you," she sentenced. "California is where I leave you all alone."

"I've always been all alone," Black retorted darkly as they made their way out of the hotel. As they both stood in the rain the woman looked back at him, trying one last time to find the warmer version of him she had uncovered back in Outworld – but that man was nowhere to be found.

They got in the car in complete silence but still he could not leave Wickett without stating the most obvious truth of his life: right before she could start the engine, the man trapped her hand in his and looked her in the eye.

"Next time you try to reach out for me like that, be more careful. Now you know what happens to those who have tried to love me."

She didn't answer.

They never exchanged glances until they reached Fillmore. Not even once. No words were spoken. He had successfully detached himself from her, and the end was near. It wouldn't hurt that much that way.

When the engine stopped, he could see something had changed within her – something was mutating inside her eyes; the place was slowly tainting her vision with the images of a past she never thought she could recover. Every house in that neighborhood, every tree, it was all a bright supernova exploding right before her blue eyes.

Her gaze was fixed on a small house right across the street. Petite windows with yellow curtains dancing around in the wind, the lonely orange tree in the front yard and those colorful flowers blooming in the pots hanging at the sides of the door.

She didn't have to tell him where they were, he learned their exact location the second he saw the tears in her eyes.

Home.

Black unfastened his seat belt and watched her as her hands became claws, holding on the steering wheel. The woman was paralyzed by the tourbillion of memories washing over her. When she closed her eyes and exhaled loudly trying to overcome the feeling, the mercenary finally let one of his hands land on her nearest knee: that was it, that was what she had longed for such a long time.

Yet she seemed gone already. Demolished inside her own memories.

"What's stoppin' you now?" He whispered softly. "What are you thinking about?"

Only then she looked at him.

"I wish Rosario was here," the woman grinned tenderly. "She reminds me of my mother – they must be about the same age."

"But your real mother is right across the street."

The woman unfastened her seat belt, yet she couldn't move; she couldn't find the strength to leave the car.

"When you were younger, didn't it cross your mind?" She wondered, even when she knew the answer already. "About your loved ones, how they were,  _if_  they still were…" The mercenary nodded pensively. "Rosario always made me feel that way. I would look at her and think about my mother and then wonder how she was,  _if_  she still was…"

"There's only one way for you to find out, Alex."

She covered her face with her hands.

"I'm not sure I can do this."

Everything he had done back in Wickett came undone the second he wrapped his arms around her. Every single barricade he had built came down as she hid her face in his chest and cried, suffocated by her own truncated past and an uncertain, blurry future. He cupped her face with his hands and planted a soft kiss on her forehead.

"We've come this far…"

"I can't do this," she said, shaking her head, unable to stop the tears.

_Turn the car around, Alex. Let's go home._

"Wait here," Black whispered as he squeezed her shoulders gently.

He got out of the car and crossed the street. Determined, the ancient cowboy knocked on the door and waited patiently until a young woman came to greet him. Long and curly chocolate hair was contrasting the clear light blue of her gaze. Her surprised gaze. The woman narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to the side, taking in the view. Then she smiled.

"Nate?"


	47. The Ties That Bind

Arc V

Chapter XLVII

**The Ties That Bind**

* * *

 " _Why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that."_

Charles Dickens ― A Tale of Two Cities

* * *

Everything happened so fast. The name covered his skin like fresh mud, and it quickly contaminated his entire anatomy. Before he could even understand what was going on, the young woman closed the door behind him, secluding the shaken cowboy inside the limits of a borrowed identity and an alien house that were now welcoming him as a crucial factor in their story. Still trapped inside the girl's tight embrace, the cowboy tried to look over his shoulder and his impatient gave him away. The awkwardness of his gesture was equally generous and obvious. She broke the embrace with a delicacy he had seldom seen before, then brushed his shoulders gently before stepping back and giving the puzzled man some well-deserved space.

As the woman examined him with curious eyes, the cowboy did the same. It was strange for him to be able to find pieces of  _her_  in that incandescent face staring back at him now. He feared, even if only for a brief instant, that she might notice.

The girl tilted her head to the side, ever so slowly, as a timid grin began to curl up her lips. She looked shy, even moved by his presence.

"It's really you…" She whispered, moving closer to the nearly petrified man. "You may not remember me but I do remember you." The girl took a step back again and walked towards the small living room, beckoning the man to join her. When she sat on the old olive couch the gunslinger finally obeyed, taking a seat on the lonely armchair by the window.

"I'm Lily, Alex's youngest cousin," she introduced herself, even if in her mind she was only reentering the life of someone she had known back in the day. "I was only nine when she went missing; I can't blame you if you don't remember me," she said, toying with her own fingers; her hands now resting on her lap.

All of a sudden, visual contact seemed forbidden for both strangers.

The cowboy nodded in silence, looking away instinctively.

"What brings you back to Fillmore after all these years?"

Unable to provide her with an answer, Black simply shrugged his shoulders, trying to protect his fragile alibi composed only by silence and bewilderment. His conscience was screaming at him that he couldn't just inform the girl that Alex was sitting on the car right across the street – this was an unparalleled chance for him to test the waters and see what was waiting for the doctor.

"I was in the neighborhood and I… I just knocked," he offered, "force of habit, some might say."

Even when he didn't know a thing about that family or about the man he was supposed to be impersonating now, his own past was still resonating all around him: he knew how to walk in those seemingly foreign shoes, knew what it was like to return to a place he had once called his own; knew what it was like to try to summon the memory of the one he had loved the most. It couldn't be that hard, after all, he pondered. It was only going to feel like an alien déjà vu – like the memory of something he had never truly experienced. Only he had experienced it, millennia ago, in a world that didn't exist anymore.

As Lily stopped playing with her own clumsy fingers, a bittersweet gesture took over her delicate features: she hadn't lied to him, she could still remember him; the young and desperate man he had been twelve years ago, in the inconsolable quest of finding his missing woman. She was just a child back then, yet the vivid image of that young man, so in love and so desperate to know… she had felt a great deal of respect for him back then, even inside the innocence of an uncorrupted child's mind.

But she wasn't a child anymore. Twelve years had gone by.

She knew she was supposed to be cautious. If he had been wandering around Fillmore until he found himself knocking on her door, the past and the present could merge into a thin veil of nostalgia and regret.

"And what's with that hair now?" Lily asked, livelier than before, trying to breathe some life into that somber space they were awkwardly sharing. "It's really not your style."

Black – now Nate – smiled tenderly as he raised both hands in a defensive stance and they both laughed for a brief moment until silence encompassed them again.

"Can I offer you a cup of coffee?" She asked timidly, already standing up and walking towards the kitchen. When a simple 'yes' escaped his lips, Lily froze in place and turned around, her hands at the sides of her waist.

"That voice… I guess you never quit smoking, did ya?"

It had been one of Alexandra's most brutal tasks, Lily remembered: to get him to give up smoking for good.

An amused Black offered her a mischievous smile as the young woman entered the kitchen. If only she knew her long-lost cousin was a smoker too now… When the sounds of cups and silver spoons began to caress his ears, Black stood up and walked around the room, trying his best to learn every detail, every single secret that house could offer to someone like him. The walls were covered in pictures; children and adults, men and women… and the smiling faces of an old couple.

Now he understood her beauty.

Nature had graced her with her mother's eyes; a deep, rich blue resembling the quiet ocean. The bonfire of her hair, exactly like her father's, completing the equation of her entire existence.

But the lonely picture resting on the wooden cupboard caught his eye. It was the only picture in the room exposing the whole family, the three of them together and happy: the doctor, her mother, and her father. When he heard footsteps approaching him from behind, he tried his best to regain his composure and act natural, grabbing the book that was carelessly placed on the same old battered cupboard.

_Emile Durkheim's Selected Writings._

Lily cupped his hand in hers, squeezing gently.

"Sociology…" he whispered, yet the girl only nodded once. She took the book from his hand only to put it back in its place. Then her fingers hovered over the picture, finally releasing the man.

She held the photograph for a moment, nervous fingertips clinging to the metallic frame.

"It was a shock for us…" she began, her voice a mere whisper, "when you didn't attend their funerals."

She didn't want to sound reproachful; she knew he had tried his best to detach himself from the memories of a past he could never recover. Still, her weakened voice traveled the space between them, caressing his ears with such overwhelming sadness.

"I didn't know," it was all he managed to say.

"My mother tried to contact you,” she remembered. “She said she left you a message with your secretary when Aunt Rosie died. But you never came. Uncle Robert died only four months after that, but most of us were so mad at you that I couldn't tell for sure if they even tried to contact you when he passed."

He was at a complete loss for words, already thinking about the woman waiting for him in the car right across the street.

"That was two years ago," she added. "I moved in a few months after Uncle Robert…" The lump in her throat was making it impossible for the young woman to go on. She let the picture rest where it belonged yet Black grabbed it again, holding it in his hand.

"I'm so sorry," he found himself whispering, his eyes unable to leave the image of that happy family, smiling back at him.

"I like to think they're together now," Lily whispered, placing her hand on his shoulder and guiding him back to the quiet living room. Their coffees had grown cold yet they both drank them anyway. Then silence, once more, stretched itself around them and impregnated the whole room.

It was taking too long. Alex was still waiting outside.

"I'm sorry about your father," Lily breathed, breaking the silence with her heartfelt condolences. "I read about him in the newspaper."

Black nodded pensively, trying his best to keep up with the scene yet it was intrinsically hard for him to play the part of a man grieving his father. There was no emotional memory for him to hold on to; only questions and regrets, and a profound feeling of injustice.

"Can I use your bathroom?" The man requested, looking for an excuse to leave the living room. He wanted out, he needed out, yet he still wasn't ready to face the doctor waiting outside. He needed a moment to process all the information he had received: he needed a moment to think about the future, to reconsider their chances. Lily nodded in silence and tilted her head to the side, indicating the familiar stranger that the bathroom was upstairs. Then she laughed, nearly soundlessly, as she remembered who she was talking to: there was no need to tell him where to go – even if time had taken him away from their family, he had been there a million times before.

The man knew that house like the back of his hand. At least, the real Nathan did.

But Erron Black didn't.

He went upstairs, just as he had been told, and the small corridor greeted him with a warm, yellowish aura as the sun outside struggled its way through the thin, green curtains. A moment alone was all he needed, but the second door to his left compelled him to stop.

_Alexandra_

Her name, handwritten on a piece of wood shaped like a white cloud, was still hanging on the door. He took a deep breath and opened the last gate secluding her past. Pink, an old and pale pink, sun-kissed by yesterday's sun was still the color of the walls. The small bed, the lonely desk, the old TV… Pictures, hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Her books, her music, her clothes. It was all a hurricane of pieces of her – pieces he had never seen before, pieces he had never dared to imagine.

Her parents had kept her old room intact and the room - the whole room - had become, in exchange, their box of memories.

He sat on her bed, overwhelmed by the feeling. He was meeting another Alexandra: the one  _before_ him, the one her parents had lost forever. He thought about her now; the one  _after_  him. The one who had opened his sacred box of memories without his permission, the one who had met the man  _before_   _her_.

They were part human, part memory.

They were their own boxes.

"When you moved out of the apartment you used to share with her, Aunt Rosie took most of her stuff back home and tried her best to put everything back in its place," he heard Lily whispering nearby as her slender figure came to rest against the doorframe. "Mine is a limited type of independence, as you can see. I live here now, by myself, yet I can't seem to bring myself to make this place my own."

He didn't look over his shoulder to meet the warm look on her face but he admired her sense of honesty and her commitment to her family, to the ones she had loved and lost… His hands reached out and caressed the beautiful photograph resting on her petite wooden nightstand – boyfriend and girlfriend, together forever in the paused universe of that picture.

They really resembled each other, he reckoned. The same color of their eyes, the same jawline… But at the same time, they were so different. So intrinsically, irrevocably different.

Unable to see the obvious connection between them, Black focused his undivided attention on Nathan's face with eyes about to rain. He could fully understand Nathan's pain; he could still hear the echoes of his own voice in the shape of that young man.

A man who had lost the woman he loved. A man who searched but never found what he was looking for. A man lost in a sea of questions no-one could answer. A broken man.

"Can I keep this?" Black asked. His eyes, unable to leave that picture; his fingers tenderly caressing her image as if trying to summon the one she had been before _him_.

"Sure," she said. "Are you sure it's not gonna cause you trouble back home? You know… with your wife."

A piercing pain invaded his chest and there it stayed, as he finally realized there was no one left for her to hold on to.

"I see her around campus from time to time but she never says 'hi' – sometimes I wonder if she doesn't remember, or if maybe she feels it's better this way," Lily went on, her voice softer than before. "I even saw your kids a couple of times... She's a professor there; they even say she's really good," she looked down, unable to hide the tears any longer. "Maybe she thinks I hate her, you know?"

He didn't know what to say.

"You have a beautiful family, Nate," she finally said, mustering her courage. "Your boy looks just like you and your baby girl… god, she's so lovely…"

He stood up and wrapped her up in a tight embrace. Even if she was just a stranger and he was nothing but a coldhearted mercenary, her words were the sad lyrics to a song he knew too well to pretend otherwise, a song of loss and defeat.  He broke the embrace little by little, giving her enough room to wipe her own tears.

"Maybe she feels like she doesn't belong in this family," he finally offered.

"And what about you, Nate?" she asked. "Do you still belong to this family?"

Tongue-tied by her straightforwardness, the man planted a soft kiss on her forehead and then left the room in silence. The girl understood his missing words, sheltering her shivering figure in their ethereal truths. Back in the living room, she walked towards the cupboard and handed him the other photograph: the one with their broad smile; the one still talking about better times.

"You should take this one too," she offered softly and he accepted it, a quiet grin taking over his face.

"Bardsdale cemetery," was all she said before walking him to the door.

Her parents were dead. And her boyfriend was now somebody else's husband. He was a father. Ironically enough, he had fathered two children. The same amount of children she had chosen not to have.

Black thanked Lily on his way out, his chest still assaulted by that indescribable pain. Outworld had never felt like home but Earthrealm was not home either and, sadly, that cruel notion could now be equally applied to both the doctor and himself.

He took a deep breath as he made his way back to the car.

They were their own world now. Part human, part memory. They were their own boxes.


	48. Love Like Blood

Arc V

Chapter XLVIII

**Love Like Blood**

* * *

 " _All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire- a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away."_

Charles Dickens ― A Tale of Two Cities

* * *

When he got in the car again and asked her to move, to let him drive, she knew something was wrong. The pictures resting on his lap and the bitter expression written all over his face were reason enough for the woman to anticipate the words he couldn't find the strength to say. And still, she didn't ask. With a cold and pale hand, she simply took the photographs and let them rest on the back seat. Then her hand came to rest on his nearest knee, as if trying to comfort him, somehow, even when she was the one whose world had just ceased to exist.

He drove in silence for hours, until all the buildings started to look the same. His hands, anchored to the steering wheel before him, seemed to have a mind of their own. It was peculiar, he thought, that he had never been the carrier of such bad news. He had always been on the receiving end of tragedy; he had always been the one hearing the bad news but having to deliver them to somebody else was something he had never had to do. Perhaps it all boiled down to the point of accepting that life, in the inconsequential substance that shapes time, had chosen him as its preferred victim. But this was an entirely different situation. He was supposed to tell her that her parents were dead, that her boyfriend was now somebody else's husband and that now he was a father. A new father who had recently lost his own father.

The words were tumbling down inside his mouth, and one by one they died quietly in the dark depths of his throat, as if afraid of venturing a trampoline that led nowhere. He was an inexperienced man who couldn't even remember how others had chosen to speak to him in times of grief; if he had to be completely honest with himself, life had never been that kind to him: no one had ever dedicated such delicate words of comfort to a vicious man like him. Best case scenario, words would be translated into long, awkward stares or muted rivers of tears silently confirming his suspicions, like when his mother died.

But fate had a way, and luck had never stayed by his side for too long. Most times there were be no stares, no tears… most times he would find out on his own that the one he was looking for was irrevocably gone, just like he had found out about Annie.

When the engine stopped roaring and the renewed silence all around them helped him hear the thoughts inside his mind more clearly than before, he smirked bitterly at the realization that, finally, he was being forced to face something he had never experienced before. It wasn't too late, or so it seemed, for someone as timeless as he to be faced by something new, but even so, he wished he didn't have to succumb to that strange novelty; wished there was a way for them to avoid the storm coming his way.

He took her to a park.

Green hills were adorned by the impeccably strident laughter from children running and playing all over the place. Beyond them, and outside the evergreen canopy composed by the many trees surrounding them, the symphony of suburbia was ready to call it a day.

They sat on a lonely wooden bench, contemplating the receding sunrays giving way to the incandescent lights of sunset. The image of those shadows from his dream rushed its way back inside his mind but now he could finally see them all vanishing before him.  _Turn the car around, Alex. Let's go back home._  All those whimsical shapes seemed just too contrived for his mind to understand their hidden meanings. Maybe those figures, obscure and secluded inside his own nightmares, had only intended to warn him about what he was going to find during their journey. Maybe they weren't trying to take the woman away from him, maybe they were already gone; existing only in an ethereal kind of reality: the one he himself had built up around his own unspoken fears. Now the only shadows he could see where the timid silhouettes of branches dancing in the warm wind and contrasting the peaceful green all around them; as they stretched far across the land and the distance like anonymous ghosts crawling at their feet.

"They're dead, aren't they?"

Her lifeless voice caressed his ears suddenly. Such final words, tainted by an unusual apathy, caused a tremulous shiver to run down his spine: even during such a defining, crucial moment of her life she seemed destined to help him. Reaching inside one of his pockets, the mercenary held on to his pack of cigarettes; the tiny red box felt heavier than ever between his calloused fingers as if the dense clouds of smoke were already thriving to reach the atmosphere. Slowly, he picked a cigar and trapped it between his lips, keeping it pressed inside his mouth for what felt like an eternity. Words seemed even harder than before, even when the woman had already pronounced the darker ones.

His coffee-colored eyes, mesmerized by the auburn horizon molded and shaped according to humanity and urbanism, were careful enough not to look in her direction. The automaton sitting right next to him was a million miles away from the woman he knew.

"If I had gone back during the census, things would have been different," once more, her colorless voice interrupted the silence. "It would be easy for me to think I chose not to come back because of you, Black, because I wanted to see you again. But I guess I didn't cross back then because I was a coward and that cowardice is the only thing left to define the one that I am now," her contrived philosophy was dangerous: he knew the tenebrous paths of guilt and regret like the back of his own hand.

As the first cloud of smoke exited his lips, the man reached out and placed a hand on her knee, mimicking her previous gesture. But still trapped inside her own mind, the woman kept her eyes focused on the sky above them, completely unable to look back at him.

It took all of him to finally open up and tell her about Nathan. Only then her expression changed, albeit briefly, exposing an initial pain that gradually mutated into something completely different. Acceptance. She couldn't change the fact that her parents had spent their lives searching for her, but at least Nathan had found a way to move on, even if that meant leaving her behind for good. As the shadows left her face, the woman looked him in the eye; her hand finally finding his.

"It's good that he was able to find someone. I can't imagine what life must be like if you spend all your years chained to the memory of someone that's never coming back." She fought back the tears, even when it wasn't Nathan the one she was crying for. With just one sentence she had described Black's entire existence. Her careless words were hurting him once again, even when he was the only one supporting her now; even when she hadn't intended to cause him any harm.

Still, he understood the storm as he looked down instinctively, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

Earthrealm had broken them.

They stayed on that bench for many hours, contemplating life and its intricate stillness in complete silence even when the sun had already begun to disappear behind the buildings. After his tenth consecutive cigarette, the man cleared his throat and looked her in the eye: there was no point in delaying the only question that was left to ask.

"Do you still want to go to Maryland?"

The woman shook her head.

"Not even to let him know that you're alive?"

"No,” she said. "If he moved on, if he found a way to move on… just let that be enough."

"Do you want me to take you to Bardsdale?"

She nodded again but as soon as Black stood up, the woman reached out for him and cupped his wrist in her hands.

"Not just yet," she whispered, her eyes still unable to look at him. "Can we just stay here?"

The children were long gone. The birds had already stopped singing their tunes. In the lighter hours of the night, the mercenary sat back down beside her, stretching one of his arms and surrounding her fragile frame with his own body.

They stayed in the park. They stayed on that bench. But they didn't talk about the future. When the first stars appeared in the sky, the doctor finally allowed herself to cry.

"How did they die?"

He didn't know.

When the night covered them with its obsidian blanket, both Black and the doctor witnessed the arrival of the lovers. Young couples, walking hand in hand and professing their love were now replacing the loud and cheerful children that only hours ago had been there. Their mellow words and the soft language of the heart were enough for the woman to finally avert her eyes as an attempt to detach herself from a feeling slowly leaving her. Her blue eyes wandered, then, from the starry sky to the branches above her head as the warm wind rocked every leaf in its safe embrace.

Then her eyes found his, stoically waiting. But this time, it was his turn to look away.

The image was too powerful. The shock had shattered her from within, leaving only an empty vessel he could not recognize no matter how hard he tried. The girl in the picture was nowhere to be found inside her darkened stare yet she extended one of her hands, all the same, reaching out for the photographs still resting on the bench in the little space between their bodies. As her fingers traced the outlines of those smiling faces, the gunslinger took a deep breath as he watched her struggling to remember the one she had been before and yet, unable to find herself in the innocence of that young girl, she looked him in the eye as if the memories summoned by those pictures belonged to someone else.

"Those people loved you; you had every reason to stay," he spoke.

"I know what I lost; I know exactly what I lost," she said, her voice colder than ever. In a way, it felt as if she was mad at him for not being able to understand how obvious things were supposed to be. "That's why it hurts so bad."

She put the pictures back on the bench then crossed her arms over her chest. The future, still blurry and distant, was beginning to get to them.

"What are you gonna do now?" Black asked. "That house belongs to you."

She laughed. Briefly, almost mechanically, yet her smile never reached her eyes.

"I can't stay with Lily,” she said. “And the house… I could never claim it as my own." She didn't give him time to ask her why. "That house belongs to Lily now. That house belongs to the ones who stood by my parents when it mattered the most; it belongs to the ones who supported Nate when he was all alone. Going back to that house is going back to the past and I could never do that to Lily. I can't just kick her out, but I can't force her to join me either."

For a brief instant, he felt the need to grab her shoulders and shake her until the many ghosts torturing her were all gone; shake her until she was free again. Yet his hands, betraying his every impulse, were now anchored to the picture of the young couple, the toxic color of his eyes was tainting their world in sepia tones and the similarities between those neglected lovers and the ones swimming inside his mind seemed too evident now to be ignored.

He handed her the picture. His eyes trained on her unreadable expression.

"I think I may have started to see pieces of me in others, like pieces of a broken puzzle," he mumbled.

"He really looks like you."

Even if her voice had shown no signs of surprise, the mercenary was left with no other choice than to admit that she was right. Nathan really looked like him. The similarities between their faces could not be reduced to the color of their eyes. There was more, there was way more than just a repetitive color. And still, even when the key to his genealogy was resting in his hand, the mercenary was unable to see beyond the most fragile bridge: the one connecting his past with his future, but in an entirely different way.

It was painfully obvious to him now how they had longed for those they could not have.

He had found Amanda in the shape of that woman and she had done the same, discovering pieces of Nathan in the battered form of that gunman.

They had spent way too much time trying to find the ashes of people they could never have and now it seemed much too late for them to finally acknowledge the reality of it all: she was not Amanda, and he wasn't Nathan. They simply were who they were.  When they found each other in the pause that was their present, they both looked away. He had said it himself; it was over. Whatever it was that they had shared, it was now in the past. And she remembered his words. She remembered vividly.

The second picture almost made her smile, yet the timid curve disappeared before it could curl up her lips. Her fingers hovered before the image of her parents.

"I can't remember their voices, you know?" She said. "I don't know when it happened, or why it happened, but it _did_ happen. Somewhere down the line, I lost their voices."

The words found him before he could even think about them.

"I can't hear my mother's voice in my dreams, and she was a singer," he confessed. It was the first time he was letting her inside the most secluded area of his nomadic soul, the zone he would show no one, the one reserved solely for himself. "Ever since I met you, those dreams came back. I have nightmares where I can see her, you know? Her mouth moves, the melody is there… but her voice is gone. There's only silence, like a punishment."

He looked down, ashamed.

"It is so capricious… not being able to listen to her voice when she sings to me. Perhaps that's the price I have to pay for every bad choice I ever made, but I didn't know back then. If I had known Amanda was pregnant I would have never left Wickett, and from that point on, it's all a chain reaction: if I had stayed, I would have never met Annie, we would have never lost our child, she would have never followed me, they wouldn't have killed her."

"All you had to do was stay, it seems easy now, but you didn't know."

"I was a bad son," the final confession left him breathless and completely vulnerable. "I am my father's son after all. Flesh of his flesh, and sin of his sins."

"Black…"

"He raped my mother when she was just a child. What good can come from that?"

She took a deep breath as one of her hands landed on his shoulder.

"There's no such thing..." she whispered, "as _inherited evil_."

"I'm not so sure," he breathed. "I fucked my aunt… repeatedly. I killed my girlfriend's father. I had a woman who risked it all because of me, and she was pregnant with my child. All I had to do was reach out and get to know her, but I chose not to. I had a wife who loved me, but I was thinking of you while I was fucking her."

She stared at him with eyes that showed no colors yet her hand, warmer than before, finally allowed his head to rest on her shoulder.

"I have always been a selfish man," he spoke. "When my mother was dying, I was having sex with Amanda. No wonder I cannot hear her voice in my dreams. I was a bad child. I was a terrible son to her."

Stunned by the revelation, the woman simply caressed his forehead.

"Or you could see it like this: while your mother's life was fading away, you were already creating another life for her to live on." Such beautiful words, he thought, even if they had been deprived of all sentiment by her colorless voice, were simply too romantic for a man like him.

When the first symptoms of dawn appeared, bathing the buildings in orange and yellow, he closed his eyes minutely as he understood what his confessions had done: the last barrier of his privacy had been demolished as an attempt to show the doctor that she was not alone. For the first time in his life, he was an open book. Not even Zar had gone that far. It stunned him to recognize the things he was willing to do for that woman; how his memories had returned after entire seasons of his life only for that woman to know he was there, right by her side. For the first time in his life, he felt peace. He was finally able to delve inside the sea of days that was his life knowing she would not judge him for she was exactly what he was: an imperfect being that had made way too many mistakes.

When he opened his eyes, he saw her clearly: Amanda was finally gone. There was only Alexandra. When she finally stood up and took his hand in hers, he saw himself, on his knees; a godless man praying in the dark for light to come his way.

He could only hope that, in her eyes, Nathan was gone as well.

* * *

Cemeteries were like small cities for the dead. At least, that's what her parents had told her long ago when she was a child. But this city was different from what she had in mind; it didn't look as tenebrous as she had thought, even when the grey canopy of clouds rolling by in the sky seemed destined to darken the already lackluster atmosphere.

The cemetery was divided into two very different sections: a very ancient-looking one, composed by bricked up buildings and old, weathered tombstones with nearly unreadable names; and a newer one with clean nameplates on the green grass.

They hadn't talked since crossing the great black gates of Bardsdale Cemetery. Not a single word had escaped from their mouths. Words and their sounds seemed futile now that they were venturing the lonely paths of death. Black was walking a few feet behind her, giving her space, but every now and then the doctor would look over her shoulder to make sure he was still there, with her, supporting her. The first time she stopped walking, he nearly bumped into her. Then she stared at him, eyes narrowed as in deep thought.

"Can you give me some money? I'd like to buy them some flowers."

He nodded in silence as he reached for the box inside his jacket, then he stretched out his hand, about to hand her the money, when a second thought crossed his mind: perhaps she would appreciate a moment of complete loneliness, far from his eyes, to express her pain without having to hold anything back. He tilted his head to the side as he handed her the box instead, keeping the money in his free hand.

"I'll get some flowers for you, you go ahead. I'll meet you there."

As the first raindrops began to kiss the green grass, the doctor accepted the box in silence, nodding her head. She could see what he was trying to do and even if she couldn't find the words to make him stay, to let him know that she felt better whenever he was around, she didn't fight his intentions. If anything, she found him noble and thoughtful. She stood still for a brief moment until his body disappeared in the mist, then she turned around and started to walk again.

It didn't take long for Black to find a florist near the entrance. Avoiding all possible small talk, the mercenary chose a bouquet of violets and went back inside the cemetery, looking for her. The misty rain felt colder than before against his skin as his eyes widened in surprise when the first lighting illuminated the grey sky. Walking faster than before, his boots revisited the path that would lead him back to her. He could already anticipate his movements in his head; he would kneel down and offer her the flowers with a gentle hand on her shoulder.

But none of that happened.

He saw her standing in the middle of the path, contemplating her parents' tomb from afar. Paralyzed by the image, the figure of that woman caused his steps to become slower than before. When he finally reached her, he understood why she hadn't been able to move forward.

Before her parents' tomb, there was a man. A tall, lean man, standing in the rain in a long, black raincoat. No umbrella. His dark blonde hair was slicked back. His hands were on his pockets.

When the mercenary contemplated her face, he understood everything. There was no need for the woman to tell him who that man was: it was crystal clear now; his image was still forged inside her eyes as if it was yesterday.

When the violent thunder shook the earth beneath their feet, the timid face of a frightened little boy appeared from underneath his father's raincoat.

"Daddy, I don't like it here. I want to go back to the car with mom."

He was four, maybe five years old. He was the son she would have liked to have with him; the one she had chosen not to have, the one he had chosen to have with another woman.

And he looked just like him.

As the woman watched Nathan reaching out for his son and lifting him up in his arms, she could hear her own heart beating like a mad drum in the middle of her heaving chest. There was no air in her lungs, no blood in her veins. Her mouth, agape, was completely dry. When Black placed his hands on her shoulders he could feel her legs trembling like a leaf; the tremor moving up, reaching her spine, aiming for her head.

Then Nathan turned around, ready to leave. But as the sky roared and the wind grew colder, he too stood petrified before her. Then he saw himself, or what seemed to be a different version of himself, standing behind her. With his hands on her shoulders, and his eyes, the same shade of coffee that had discovered her so many years ago, professing the same old love for her that only he himself could profess.

It was terrible. It was beautiful. It was impossible.

It was all a dream. The image of the ones they should have been; the exact way a woman her age should have looked like, his hands on her shoulders. Together. Like one. Covering the boy's face with one of his hands, Nathan ran off as if he had just seen a ghost. Only Black dared to take a look over his shoulder. The doctor stood there, her eyes fixed forwards, in the space Nathan had occupied before. When the mercenary turned around again and got on one knee to grab the flowers that were now soaked in the ground, he saw her legs finally moving. Running. Getting lost inside that dead city.

But she wasn't following Nathan. She was simply trying to lose herself in the rain.

He chased after her until he lost her and there he stood, helpless in the rain; a man who had seen his own face in the face of another man. Now it was his heart the one performing the most violent drumming song as he wandered through the tombstones and the bricked-up buildings recognizing the irony of time, the pun of his existence; always looking, never finding.

Hours piled up upon his tired shoulders. When his legs felt heavy and his mouth had run out of breath, he made his way back to her parents' tomb.

There she was, sitting on the grass facing the nameplates with her back turned to him. His box was on the ground, a few inches away from her legs. He approached her in silence, careful not to startle her, but the second he wrapped his arms around her shoulders he knew something was wrong: the tip of the gun he had given her was pressed firmly against her forehead.

She had envisioned the end.

_Please don't taste like blood, please don't taste like blood, please don't taste like blood…_

She had lost it all.

The second his lips touched the back of her head, the woman flinched. Trembling, he reached out and grabbed the gun, tossing it aside immediately. Then her body collapsed, her back landing heavily against his agitated chest. He held her in his arms as she cried like a helpless child. When he opened his eyes, he understood why Nathan had chosen not to visit her parents' tomb for such a long time: placed between Robert and Rosie's nameplates, there was a smaller nameplate with no dates on it, just a name.

Alexandra Flynn.

Visiting their tombs meant letting go. It meant that no-one was looking for her anymore. It meant that she was never coming back.

The woman shifted inside his arms, her reddened eyes found his.

"I told you I don't want to be kept inside a box of memories," she said as her eyes found the gun discarded on the floor. She observed the weapon as if it was something alien, something she had never seen before. "You don't want me  _there_ , but there's nothing  _here_. I belong nowhere."

The woman buried her face in his chest as her hands became tight, whitened fists clinging onto him and the man took a deep breath, welcoming his very last fear: there was love after Amanda.

He loved that woman.

Without her, the adventure of a decade  _togetherapart_  would have never existed. Without her, he would have never found out about Amanda's last days. He would have never known about his daughter. He would have never been able to address his deepest regret: if only he had known, he would have stayed there; he would have stayed by Amanda' side during her pregnancy, he would have been a father for that girl, he would have saved both his children - one from the suffocating heat of fire, and the other from the cold embrace of abandonment.

He would have never accepted Shang Tsung's offer…

A long time ago, while he was still in Earthrealm, he once read that the human being dies a little with each passing day. His death was a slow one, his death was an eternal agony he could not escape from, he knew.

He cupped her face with his hands before planting a soft kiss on her forehead. It took him some time to find his voice and even after he had found it, the words leaving his mouth were treacherous and convoluted.

It wasn't easy, after all, for a man like him to speak like that.

"I can live with the memories; I can live with the pain,” he said, “I can even live with the uncertainty of not knowing much about anything…” The words were clumsy and inconclusive, and twisted. "But I don't think I'll be able to live without you if I know you're still somewhere out there but you're not with me."

He cursed himself under his breath. Such an old man, still finding trouble inside his own mouth.

"I learned that the hard way, during my stay in prison. I spent ten years thinking about you and where you were, if you still were…"

One last pause for the man to remember the words he should have said more than a century ago.

But she shook her head. Her hands, wrapped around his neck, silenced him before he could talk. Then her fingers moved to his face, tracing the many paths that the raindrops had imprinted all over his cheeks.

"You can't age, Black,” she whispered. "You can't age."

It was terrible. It was beautiful. It was impossible.


	49. The Seventh Day

Arc V

Chapter XLIX

**The Seventh Day**

* * *

 " _One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time."_

Hermann Hesse ― Demian

* * *

_0.8 miles outside Milton, DE_

_._

When it all was said and done, Outworld appeared on the horizon as their only viable option.

As hard as it was for the mercenary to accept his mistake, Earthrealm had only exposed its most insufferable, bitter side, depriving them both of all hope of ever finding the paths they had lost so many years ago. He should have known better: names like his name and  _second chances_  can never be used in the same sentence; not even when faced by his own face, not even when summoned by the echoes of his name, inexplicably alive in another name… No. Second chances are never given to such despicable men. They don't deserve them. They wouldn't even know what to do with them, when to use them,  _if_ they should dare to use them…

The problem is: such despicable men can't seem to understand the concept of time. It is simply too long, then too short; then too much and then, too little. All at the same time. They exist and they don't, all at the same time.

His latest adventure with the doctor had been enough for the man to understand that even if evergreen, even if perennial, his own concept of time could be measured in failures. From one heartache to the next one and everything in between –  _the face, the name, the eyes._ Earthrealm had been a collection of heartaches for both of them; a cruel repertoire or sad songs that could have easily been avoided if he had just listened to the woman when she said she didn't want to go back.

Even if his intentions were noble, it was simply too late for her.

Fate had fooled him once again and the bittersweet aftertaste contaminating his mouth was all too familiar for him: nothing stays the same; it is absolutely futile to try to find yesterday in the vertiginous continuity of the present.

He had learned that the hard way. People leave. People change. And people die.

One week in Earthrealm had been enough for him to understand that the doctor could never set foot on that place again. There was nothing left for her to hold on to; her place had been taken by some other woman and, in the stoppable motion of life, she had found herself completely unneeded by those she had left behind. There was no place for her now other than the place he had reserved just for her, with him, in the impassible mud that was Outworld.

It was meant to be hard.

It was meant to be dramatically hard now, for his already wounded pride, to understand that the only thing left for him to do was to take her back to the only place where he didn't want her to be.

 _The darkest gray, the lightest black_. _Outworld._

Outworld was not what she deserved yet it was the only place where they could be together, or as together as can be, far from the maddening echoes of Earthrealm.

There was much to talk about; so many things he would have to say to her  _(beginning with an apology)_ and then the request would find him, certain and ever selfish:  _I don't want you to go back to work if working means you'll have to…_ so many things had changed between them in the impossibly insignificant amount of time they had spent together in Earthrealm. Seven days, even God had felt the need to rest.

But he knew, he was certain. There would be no rest for them.

The thought of simply letting her go back to the life she had before, the miserable life she had found as one of Rosario's girls, seemed devastating for him now but who was he to ask her that? Who was he to tear her apart from the only semblance of a family she still had? He had been the one to cast her away in the first place, forcing her to revisit the ashes of her own past… He shook his head in silence, disheartened by his own thoughts. In a way, they were even: her carelessness had corrupted his memories and his misplaced good intentions had broken her present. Still, he couldn't bring himself to blame her, not anymore: the image was still too powerful, her weaknesses exposed and bare for his eyes to see, for his mind to understand that Earthrealm had broken her, just as much as it had broken him.

The evening in Milton was peaceful and even if he had let her sleep during most of their journey back to Delaware, her eyes were still describing an intrinsic sense of exhaustion that had nothing to do with geographical distances. The trees were still, idly resting in the windless hours before the night. They had left the car in silence, their feet approaching the abandoned military base sheltering the portal. Then he felt her hand as it landed gently on his nearest shoulder, asking him subtly to turn around and meet her gaze. Gray, her eyes – it would take more than words to breathe some color into them.

The doctor threw her arms around his neck and shoulders, prolonging the silence, and stretching her affection until he felt completely wrapped up in it. Then she too turned around, as if quietly saying her goodbyes to a world that had rejected her for the last and final time.

_Gray._

The mercenary held her hand in his, his eyes lost in the modern crown of buildings shaping the horizon beyond the river. Her goodbye was his own in a way; for they both knew it would be the last time they would be standing there, together, on the verge of a world that could never understand and, still, it was hard not to feel moved by the sight of a world so irrevocably alive.

It was hard not to feel moved by the visions of a world that had learned to survive without them. Now it was their time to remember  _how to do it_ , how to keep going without it, how to move on and never look back.

Every bird singing their tune, every tree and every star in the sky were now about to become obsolete treasures they could never fully recover.

Now, the hostility of Outworld would come to replace each one of those sights and visions in the darkest gray and in the lightest black. The birds would turn into monsters, the trees would become cold stone and the stars in the sky would be like simple memories, like ruthless darts aiming for their hearts, reminding them of the ones they were no more.

She let go of his hand; her fingers were warmer than before. Her eyes searched for his, then she knew, she felt it: it was time. When the man nodded wordlessly at her determination she felt her own soul exiting her mouth in the ethereal shape of a sigh. He caught it midway, eating it whole with his lips. Devoured, her soul became his food. Then he took her hand in his, satisfied. He would never starve again.

She was the first to cross. Then it was his turn.

As the white lights emanating from the portal slowly faded from their eyes, and their bodies welcomed the darkness of Shao Kahn's ruined library, the memory of Earthrealm began to die its long, painful death inside of them. They stepped away from the mystical gate until their backs met one of the many broken pillars surrounding them. She smiled shyly when he reached out for her, catching her before she could fall. It was a small gesture, they both knew, but it was enough, in a way, to make her see that she was no longer alone.

Removing the hair from her face he leaned in closer, resting his forehead on hers.

"What are we gonna do now?" She whispered against his mouth, including him for the very first time in the blurry prospect that was her future.

"I would like…"

Who was he to dictate the things she could or could not do?

Who was he to force her to leave the only place, the only family she still had?

He looked her in the eye as he took a step backward but when his hand caressed her cheeks, the unsaid message became crystal clear for the woman.

"No, it's not what you think," he spoke, as if ashamed of himself.

The woman brushed his shoulders as a minuscule gesture of understanding took over her pale face: she knew exactly what he wanted; there was no need for the man to say such words out loud. Still, it was conflicting for her to think about the rest of her days in that dreadful place with nothing to do. Even if she still was a doctor, medicine in Outworld differed greatly from the medicine she had studied and practiced years ago, back in Earthrealm. She had had her fair share of experimentation during her first years in the brothel, discovering the causes of the most peculiar sexual diseases she had ever seen, but her desperation back then had forced her to spill all of her secrets and even Black himself had discovered the truth: she had made such a remarkably good job back then that her services as a doctor were no longer required.

"We'll think of something," she mumbled, trying her best to sound reassuring even when the prospect of staying  _home_  all day, waiting for him to return wasn't appealing in the slightest.

Job discussion, checked. Now “ _home”_  was an entirely different concern. If he didn't want her to go back to the House of Pleasure, that only meant one thing: he wanted her to live _with_ him. He wanted his house to be her house. And he wanted their house to become their _home_.

An insecure frown shaped her features as she remembered the battered room he lived in. With barely enough space to accommodate Black and a depressing aura of total defeat, what he had to offer was somehow far worse than her own room in the brothel. Still, she couldn't tell him that. She knew he had lost most everything after spending an entire decade in prison: his privileges as one of Kotal's closest enforcers, his wife, his job, his luxurious place in the Palace, his generous paychecks and above all that, his pride. She shook herself out of the thought: the man had been through more than enough, her judgmental elucubrations were the last thing he needed now, especially considering the fact that he was the only one left for her to hold on to.

 _The lightest Black_.

When the image of Rosario appeared in her mind, she understood that even if life in the brothel had become a complication for her now that the members of El Club had openly stated that they wanted El-A to become Rosario's successor, she could still count on the old, Peruvian manager to make her feel better and she had left her all alone, subtly giving up in the war against El-A and the syndicate.

Now it seemed much too late for the doctor to reclaim her place.

They had spent a week in Earthrealm – El-A's rumors must have spread like a mad fire, consuming everything in its violent wake. Now her clothes were different, her hair had returned to the original auburn she had purposefully chosen to leave behind back then and Black had also disappeared during the same period of time: it wouldn't take a scientist to understand that they had run away together, confirming El-A's every suspicion.

When the mercenary took her by the hand and led her towards the stairs, the woman stood still in her place.

"We need to be careful," she whispered. "We might have given El-A exactly what she was looking for."

He breathed out, soft yet resolute.

"If only El-A was the real problem…" Black said. "Maybe she lives for gossip, but we both know that there are  _others_  that hide behind her stories." He was right. Their sudden departure had opened up the gates for the syndicate to rise and proclaim El-A as Rosario's true and  _only_  successor and a part of Black was having a hard time trying to hide his evident satisfaction with the situation: if the doctor had indeed lost her place as Rosario's successor, it wouldn't be necessary for the woman to go back to the brothel at all. Plus, taking out the syndicate was priority number one in his plan to climb the ladder that would lead him straight back to the Palace – if she wasn't involved, there would be no restrictions for him. If she wasn't there, there would be no need for him to wonder and worry. He would simply erase the syndicate. His actions would catapult him back to the rightful place he should have never lost: he would be the one that stands right next to the emperor again, wielding power and fortune.

And she would be there too.

Far from the dangers of the syndicate, forever distanced from the whore that her own history had forced her to be. His and only his.

With a simple movement of his hand, the man indicated the doctor it was time to face the long way up in order to go back into the world. But when they found themselves reaching for the secondary foyer, they had to hide behind the large marble desk. It was unusual for the office to be so crowded during the night, Black considered as he heard many steps coming from all directions.

But nobody said it would be easy, he thought.

As soon as the sounds dissipated, Black placed both his hands on the desk, craned his neck and took a good look around: there were about half a dozen barristers, all carrying papers and books. They were headed upstairs and that notion gave the couple a small window of opportunity to get on their feet and run towards the balcony but before they could reach their destination, a soft hand grabbed Black by the wrist, forcing his hurried steps to come to an unexpected halt.

"It's so good to have you back, boy," Yvo said softly, even when the expression on his face was far from happy. "And, at the same time, it is oh, so terrible,” he added as his eyes found the doctor standing only a few inches away from the mercenary. "And you, my dear…" he tried to reach out for her but Black blocked the way, stretching one of his arms and preventing the barrister from touching her.

"What's going on?" The cowboy demanded quickly.

"Not here."

Careful, the old barrister guided them upstairs but instead of joining the younger barristers, he instructed the couple to enter a secluded, small room past the benches on the great hall. Quick, short steps led the way. After closing the door and lighting up one of the torches resting idly by the wall, Yvo sat on the ground, a clear gesture of pain taking over his face.

His knees, Black remembered…

"The situation has changed," the barrister began, a sad languor was laced around his voice. Neither Black nor the doctor dared to speak. As the gunman crossed his arms over his chest, a tremulous fear invaded him –  _the portal_ , perhaps they had tracked the crossing.

As if reading his mind, the barrister moved his hands in the air, rapidly dismissing Black's thoughts.

"Your absence didn't go unnoticed but no, nobody checked  _that_  portal," Yvo shook his head, taking a deep breath. "Please don't leave this room until we find a believable excuse to justify the days you spent in Earthrealm – a lot has changed, I'm afraid, and a lot more is about to change in the following hours. It is vital for you two now to create and consolidate a good alibi for yourselves; otherwise, you'll be targeted as prime suspects. I know you weren't here, I know, it's just that the timing… the timing for your return seems a little off…"

When the barrister paused, something had already changed in him; his voice was darker, more concerned than before. His eyes found Black's, staring back at him.

"Rosario is dead."


	50. La Mala Sangre

Interlude

**La Mala Sangre**

(The blood gone bad)

* * *

"1-

Let me introduce myself. I am… and so on and so forth. Now you know more about me than I know about you.

2-

_I am setting out from the meeting with what I am, with what I now begin to be, my descendant and my ancestor, my father and my son, my unlike likeness._

Though I am reaching over hundreds of years as if they did not exist, imagining you at this moment trying to imagine me, and proving finally that imagination accomplishes more than history, you know me better than I know you. Maybe my voice is dim as it reaches over so many years, so many that they seem one long blur erased and joined by events and lives that become one event, one life; even so, my voice is sufficient to make The Monument out of this moment."

Mark Strand – The Monument

* * *

His wife was worried about him. And he was fed up with her.

Her concern, albeit genuine, was asphyxiating. Her love had gone bad lately, or at least that's what he would tell himself. Everything had changed after visiting the cemetery: the eyes he had seen; such color; he could recognize that particular shade of coffee anywhere. His wife's affection, the tender love that had helped him back then was now his personal prison. Even when they had been together for several years now, the man had finally acknowledged his complete lack of freedom only recently. Right after the cemetery. Right after those eyes.

Everything changed in the cemetery. Everything.

His children had now become the guardians of the prison he had built all around him the second he married that woman. He had felt it right there, right in front of that grave, when the warmth of his son's embrace quickly became fire in his arms. Then he had covered the kid's face as if trying to protect him from the disturbing specters blocking the way. He had only covered his son's eyes to prevent the boy from seeing the face of the woman that should have been his mother; he had only covered his son’s eyes as a way to avoid the subsequent comparison between that foreign beauty that was his no more and the mundanity of the woman waiting for them in the car.

_If you could only picture this as a garden, boy… a beautiful meadow in bloom that quickly becomes a muddy, broken valley._

_Your eyes gave you away._

"Why are you here, Nathan?" The therapist asked. "What is making you come to see me this late at night?"

_Your eyes gave you away but don't get me wrong, kid; it wasn't just the color. I see in your eyes the same evil that defines my own sight; my ridiculous nature, my viciously colored world._

Nathan rearranged his green tie and looked out the window, breathing out loudly.

_She once said to me that there's no such thing as inherited evil but now that I can finally look at you and see you as you are, I have to admit that she was scandalously wrong. I still am my father's son; I am the flesh of his flesh and the sin of his sins. Just as you are the flesh of my flesh, and the sin of my sins._

He hated to be the one that calls long after the day is over; the one that calls when working hours are obsolete, already existing in the past tense. But it all had started with a call. Or two calls, to be exact.

He was driving home when his cell phone rang. At first, he thought his secretary was calling him because he had forgotten something at the office. He cursed under his breath before answering; he had told her many times not to call him outside his working hours unless it was an emergency.

In a way, it was.

Nathan's secretary, Vivian, told him that a woman named Lily had tried to contact him but when informed that he had already left the building for the day, the woman decided to leave a message for him. Now Vivian was calling him to tell him that this woman had said that she was sorry, that their unexpected encounter had shaken her.

_"Tell him it wasn't my intention to sound rude or uncaring… His visit sort of startled me, that's all. I understand he has a family now; I wasn't trying to bring him down with all those memories…"_

"So… Nathan, what's going on?" The therapist insisted.

Lily.

Lily Flynn.

"I received a phone call yesterday," he began, eyes distant and absorbed in the starry night outside the window. "My secretary told me that Alex's cousin was sorry, that my visit had surprised her."

The therapist folded his arms over his chest.

"Why did you visit her?"

"That's the point," Nathan sentenced, his irises finally finding the middle-aged man observing him at the other side of the room. "I didn't."

The man stood up and leaned his body on the doorframe just as Nathan turned around and shifted position on the burgundy divan. Then he buried his hands inside his pockets, as if searching for warmth.

"Alexandra belongs in a pleasant past, Nathan; a past you tried very hard to cling on to for the longest time. When her memory became too painful for you to bear you simply detached yourself from it… But it is completely understandable, now that you just lost your father, that you would try to find that past again." Words seemed fragile and obvious as if the doctor wasn't trying to help at all. An evident gesture of disgust took over Nathan's face: he didn't want to be reminded of those that were his no more. He didn't want the conversation to go  _that_  way.

"Alexandra also represents a time when things were easier for your family."

The young CEO averted his eyes – he couldn't dare to take a look inside those irises about to deconstruct his sanity.

"Your parents were divorced, but they could still coexist in a rather peaceful manner. Your father was healthy. Your brother was still there for you; the conflict between the two of you did not exist back then. You were a happy young man, Nathan. You had a beautiful woman by your side and a bright future ahead of you. You were spoiled, young, rich and carefree – and deeply loved… You had it all."

"This has nothing to do with my father," Nathan cut him off abruptly. "I went to the cemetery because I thought… because I  _felt_ that call was some sort of sign…"

Now it was the therapist's turn to interrupt the words he was hearing.

"You went to the cemetery," the middle-aged man began, his brow furrowed, his diction slow and careful, "looking for a sign, you say. A sign of what?"

Silence.

"What did you want to find there, Nathan?" The professional pushed him. "What were you expecting to find?"

More silence.

"Are you scared?" The therapist asked him after a while, a certain sense of honesty was laced in his voice even when he was trying his best to act professionally. It came with the job, he recognized after so many years of treating the same patient; it was inevitable to bond, even if they weren't friends, even if they were never going to be friends. Still, it was easy for the doctor to sympathize with someone like Nathan: a strong, privileged man who had suffered more than enough.

Nathan’s case was one of his personal favorites.

Nathan was complex and twisted. There was a defying darkness, innate and latent, inside of him. A darkness that had covered him one day, the day Alex went missing; a darkness that still today refused to let him go. When Nathan looked out the window and sighed somberly, the doctor pressed on.

"Do you fear the future, Nathan?"

The CEO laughed briefly but his smile never reached his eyes.

"I don't know anymore."

"What do you mean?"

He shrugged his shoulders. Even when the answers seemed way too obvious for him to say the words out loud, he knew the man would not stop unless he spoke every last one of them. "I haven't felt fear in a very long time. A  _very_  long time."

Kano had killed his fears. All of them. One by one.

"Why is that?"

"Because when my father got sick, I knew he was gonna die. And when my brother left, I knew he was not coming back. When Loraine told me she was pregnant, I knew the dream of finding Alex was over…" he paused, reaching inside his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. Fingers held on to the tiny box, scrunching it up nervously. "I should have known when she disappeared, that she wouldn't be back. Everything's always been so final for me, so definitive."

"Do you fear loneliness?"

With a guffaw, the CEO folded his arms over his chest again.

"How can I be afraid of loneliness? I'm never alone, I'm never  _fucking_  alone."

As the professional nodded pensively, Nathan inspected his cigarettes: loose tobacco was escaping through the cracks in the paper – he had ruined the entire pack.

"Do you want to be left alone? Do you pursue loneliness?"

"And who doesn't?" Nathan replied harshly, sitting up in the divan and bringing his hands to his temples. "You work all day in a building filled with incompetent morons, then you go back home and you have to listen to your wife and your children." He stopped all of a sudden, as soon as he sensed the ungratefulness he was imprinting in his words. "It's not that I don't love them," he was almost pleading now, looking at the other man right in the eye, "I love my kids, you know I do."

The therapist let his pen rest on top of the papers neatly arranged on his large, wooden desk. Then he turned around slowly and opened the window.

"I am not here to judge you, Nathan, I thought you already knew that."

He observed the destroyed cigarettes resting on the palm of Nathan's hand, then his eyes traveled up, way beyond the bookshelf on the other side of the room until they stopped right above the door. The doctor sighed, not ready to get lost inside the labyrinth of emotions that Nathan had crafted for himself.

"Then why did you go to the cemetery? What were you searching for?" His eyes found Nathan's staring back at him; hungrily, impatiently. "It was your first time there, wasn't it?"

Nathan nodded in silence.

"I thought it was a sign. I thought… I said, Ok, I didn't visit her cousin, I don't even know why this woman is calling me now but maybe it's like an old debt I'm supposed to pay; maybe I should just go visit them," he stuttered, "visit  _her_." He stood up, sweaty palms resting at the sides of his legs, then he sat back down, confused. "There is a nameplate, you know? Between her parents' nameplates, there's  _her_  nameplate. No date, just her name."

"And how did it make you feel? Seeing her nameplate for the very first time," the therapist asked.

"Unworthy."

The peculiar word startled the professional. His surprise was evident: Nathan was inches away from reentering depression.

"It's like… it's so  _easy_ ," Nathan began, eyes tearing up. "We don't know what happened to her, so we just assume she's dead. And we  _bury_  her, symbolically of course, but we don't write dates as if there's no need for details. And here I am,  _with my son_ , standing right in front of her nameplate and saying my goodbyes as if she was  _actually_  there… but I don't talk to my boy, I don't explain to him who she was or why she was important to me. It's like we all are taking everything for granted; it's like we don't give a crap anymore. It's really pathetic, you know? I bring my son to the cemetery with me because the moment's important, because I want him there with me and then…"

"And then what?"

"And then it fades away. Waiting for us in the car, there's the woman I never wanted to marry. In front of me, the only woman I ever loved is… but at the same time, she isn't. I guess that's the point. She still isn't. Her parents are gone, our whole world is gone and we just… we just clapped our hands in the end, choosing the simple way out. I married another woman because it was easier and we put a nameplate for her there, because it was…"

"Healthier," the doctor corrected him. "You married another woman because it was healthier."

Nathan didn't correct the man. He had told him many things about himself, and he had always been sincere. But there were other truths he had chosen not to share. His relationship with his wife had been doomed from the start. When they first met, he was already corrupted by Kano's obscurity - she never had an actual chance of meeting the real Nathan; the original Nathan had disappeared with Alexandra.

Healthier was not the right word, then.

_Wiser._

He had married another woman because it was the wisest thing to do… And because she was pregnant with his child, just like his father had married his mother way back then, when Nathan himself became a reality growing inside her belly. But they had loved each other. They endured together until love faded from their hearts, but they both fought for it, they struggled together.

Loraine was fighting alone; he would never fight by her side. He was simply not interested.

_She once told me there's no such thing as inherited evil, can you believe this woman, kid? So thoughtful, so loving, always taking care of others… how can she love us? Do you ever stop and wonder, boy, 'cause I sure do every night… when I go to bed with her I just look at her while she sleeps right next to me and I know I don't deserve her. And still, she loves me._

_Women, huh?_

Nathan got on his feet again and leaned his body on the bookshelf. Then he looked down at his own hands: his wedding ring was burning against his skin.

"I don't love her."

"I know," the doctor replied softly, breaking eye contact. "Why don't you get a divorce?"

Silence.

 _You and I both know; we are the sons of crime. We are dark men, Nathan. Did you feel it back then, when you were but a little boy? Inside of you, growing and taking hold of you like a parasite choosing its final host. Something dark, something dense…_ _Like a silent sin that grows deep within you that you know, at some point, is gonna scratch until it reaches the surface._

"Nathan…" the doctor exhaled loudly, "your father's death is affecting you, whether you see it or not. When we grieve, when we mourn, we break up with a part of ourselves that we want to keep. Your father was a strong, young man; the news about his decease took you by surprise and it all happened so fast you barely had any time to readjust to this new reality."

"I know…"

Voice weaker than before, Nathan began to feel the warmth of tears as they streamed down his face. He hadn't cried in years. He hadn't cried after  _her_.

"Why did this happen to me? Why me?"

_Because we are vermin._

_But even if my blood is your blood, my flesh is your flesh and my sins are your sins don't you think, not even for a moment, that we are family._

_You and me, we are vermin, we are mud from the same broken valley._

"Why  _not_  you?"

Silence.

"Nearly twelve years ago, when your father Julian resigned and made you CEO, you knew he would always help you."

It was crystal clear for the younger man that his therapist wasn't simply talking about professional guidance. Julian was a capable man; a shark in the industry, but back then, he was just a father reaching out and trying to console his son. When Julian resigned and made Nathan the brand-new CEO of Bhertineslitsz Pharmaceuticals, he was trying to give his son a new compass in his life, a new North for him to walk towards to. A new aim, a new perspective.

He had lost himself trying to find  _her_. And Julian wanted him back even if it meant losing his other son to the contagious plagues of jealousy and envy.

"And he did," the doctor went on, "he helped you. He assisted you and taught you everything you now know about the pharmaceutical industry. But now he's gone. Now you might be feeling alone again, Nathan." The man paused for a second, his eyes trying to find Nathan's. "As alone as you felt back then when she disappeared."

It took him a moment for his eyes to finally stop raining. He paced around the room in silence until he sat back down on the divan; his hands landing heavily on his knees. He sighed.

"I used to dream about her, I told you this already. But the dreams stopped a few months ago."

His eyes were vacant, staring out the window.

"I'm walking down the street. I can't place the city; I think it's probably LA but I'm not really sure. Then I see her. She's standing a few steps away from me, waiting for the traffic lights to change. I walk towards her and touch her shoulder ever so lightly, so she turns around and sees me. She doesn't say anything to me, she just grins at me. It's not a mocking grin but more of a peaceful smile and I smile back at her and suddenly I realize that the traffic lights have already changed but she doesn't go; she stays there with me. She looks into my eyes and smiles again, and I begin to ask her things such as 'How have you been?' or 'How are you?' or even 'Where have you been all this time?' but she never answers. She just keeps on smiling at me, and I feel numb and confused so I smile as well. We stay that way for some time and then, at some point, she looks at me differently, just as if she is about to open her mouth and finally say something to me. But every time she's about to speak I wake up."

His fingertips were now massaging his temples. The headache was back.

"During all this time, I've always longed to find meaning in that. Because I'm sure there must be some kind of twisted meaning encysted deep within that dream. It's like a punishment, you know. It shouldn't feel that way, but it does somehow. Her voice is more than her voice, it's a symbol. It's a barrier I cannot trespass."

He rubbed his knees, mimicking the motions of an old man. Yet he was still intrinsically young.

"I went to the cemetery to find that dream," he confessed. "I want my dream back."

The therapist tilted his head to the side then turned over his shoulder and closed the window again; the cold breeze of the quiet night was growing colder by the second.

"And did you find it?"

"No. But I found something else instead," he spoke somberly. "I saw her – and  _myself_ , in the cemetery. They were staring back at me; I know how this sounds, I know you might think I'm going crazy, but I swear I'm not. I saw them, and they saw me." As his eyes widened and narrowed time and time again trying to guess his therapist's reaction, the man leaned forward, expectantly, but the professional simply folded his arms over his chest, grabbed his forgotten pen and began writing in his little black notebook.

"What? Nathan inquired, nearly demolished by the lack of reaction from the professional. "Nothin' to say?"

Only then the middle-aged man looked him in the eye,

"What do you want me to say?" His voice, albeit soft, was becoming increasingly impersonal. "Do you want me to tell you that you're not crazy? Or perhaps you need me to tell you that whatever you think you saw, it wasn't real?"

His hands balled up to create tight, enraged fists.

"It was real. My son saw them too."

As the therapist closed his notebook again and rolled his eyes at Nathan, he could sense the verity in those words. Still, it didn't mean that Nathan had seen himself with his missing girlfriend in the cemetery. It would make for a good horror movie, the doctor pondered, but this was real life.

"Ghosts do not exist."

Nathan's knuckles turned white in fury: he knew no-one would believe him.

"My son saw them too."

"As you did, your son, a five-year-old kid, saw two people. But unlike you, he never met Alexandra so he can't really say that the woman he saw was indeed her. I'm not saying that you didn't see anything; I believe you when you say you saw someone, a man and a woman. Perhaps you saw the ones you would have liked to be, perhaps you saw the you that you would have been with her." He wasn't fond of coldhearted terminology but in cases like this, he knew he had no choice. "It's called transference, Nathan. You and your son must have seen two strangers and your need, your emotional baggage gave them faces; the faces you needed to see."

It made sense, in a way. It was plausible. Logical.

"Why did you bring your son?" The question brought him back to reality.

"I told you, I didn't want to go alone."

"You could have brought your wife instead, it would have been a much more sensible option," the doctor kept on pushing, "and you know it, Nathan. Why the boy? Why your son?"

Silence.

There were a million reasons why for him not to choose Loraine. She was no fool, she knew he had only married her because she was pregnant. Still, a part of him had always tried his best to protect her, as if trying to compensate for something, an old debt from his past.

"I don't want her to feel like she's replacing someone," Nathan finally said. "I don't want her to feel like she has the responsibility or the obligation, to be someone else. I know it's not much but it's something I have always felt, ever since we met – the need to differentiate her from Alex, you know?"

"What do you mean?" The therapist inquired.

"It's not  _her_  family… she doesn't have to interact with them. I don't want her to feel like she's stealing somebody else's place," he breathed out, feeling exhausted. "I always knew I could never take her to visit Alexandra´s parents. It's not because there's something wrong about Loraine, far from it, but she's just not their daughter. She's the one that stands in the exact place where their daughter used to be." For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he was finally able to speak freely about his wife. "And it's not her fault. She didn't ask for a broken man, she didn't ask for a story so twisted."

"Do you feel like you owe her? And I'm not talking about your children…"

The younger man considered his possible answers but, in the end, he simply chose silence over words. He shook his head once, then twice, more energetically than before.

"If I had to be honest,” he said, “it's not like she saved me, it’s quite the opposite."

"Why?"

"Why?!" The CEO exclaimed. "Because I wasn't ready to let someone in again but she was pregnant, what was I supposed to do?" Hands in the air, furious, he went on. "I was devastated, and she comes to me and says  _we're having a baby, Nate_ , I couldn't fuckin' breathe!"

The doctor nodded quietly.  _Guilt_ , he thought, was the only word that could describe what Nathan felt towards his own wife. _Resentment_ , perhaps, especially taking into consideration the fact that Loraine was, in spite of Nathan's efforts, occupying somebody else's space.

The spark of a doubt ignited inside the therapist's mind. It was a question he had been keeping inside for quite some time but every time he had found himself on the verge of releasing those words, his patience had always prevailed. This time, though, it was different. This time, Nathan had _seen_ or perhaps _envisioned_ himself and the woman he still loved.

"What if Alex came back?"

Stunned, the younger man looked at the palms of his own hands.

"What if she returned, Nathan?" The doctor insisted, even when the answer was painfully obvious and written all over Nathan's pale face. "What about Loraine?"

A bittersweet grin tainted his sight. The question was pointless: that man was always going to choose Alexandra over Loraine. With a heavy heart, the older man sighed, nearly soundlessly, tempted to reach inside the top drawer for a pack of smokes.

"Why did you choose to become the man in the middle?"

Nathan brought one of his hands to his chest, letting it linger before his heart even if only minutely. His other hand was still resting on his knee, as if trying to quiet down the leg underneath as it moved up and down in a stoic yet maddening rhythm.

"The man in the middle?" He asked, mildly surprised and the older man nodded calmly.

"The one that stands right in the middle of the adventure of the future (your son); and the irrecoverable past, Alexandra."

As the professional stood up and walked around the desk, Nathan could feel his limbs going numb. He hadn't seen it that way, he had never really thought about it.

"The future is secure. Your son is sheltered by you and your wife, but the past is also secure," the doctor paused for a second as he leaned his body on the desk and folded his arms over his chest. "The dead cannot be harmed; they can't be hurt. In their own way, they are safe. You were the only one in that scene that was completely alone, even if you were standing right beside your little boy. You were the only one who's still not secure, not safe… unsheltered."

As the younger man rubbed his fingers against his temples, the image of that couple staring back at him in the rain invaded his mind.

It was all he could see. Real or not, the feeling was unmistakable. He hated them. Deep down, he couldn't help but feel angered by those people, as if depowered by them. The expressionless looks they had shared, their silent benevolence, as if they pitied him.

"The only way out is through, Nate," the old man offered as he sat back down behind his desk, yet his simple words only seemed to spark the flames of fury burning inside of Nathan.

"I hate them," the younger man spat coldly. "I know I'm supposed to cruise amongst these ghosts, but I can't. I just can't."

"What do you feel?" The therapist leaned forward, his chest almost touching the desk.

Nathan embraced his own private agony with eyes closed, and lips parted.

"I know this is the price I have to pay after all the bad shit I've done," he began, even if he had never told his therapist a single word about his deals with Kano. He never really had to: stress, work, the responsibilities of a man in his position… All the bad shit he had done could mean  _every time I came home late_ ,  _every time my kids needed me, and I wasn't there_ …

"This is it; this is the punishment. My mind plays these tricks on me and makes me believe that she's still out there, somewhere, with _me_ … even if I'm not that man I feel like I am, somehow. It's like we are still together in some other place that I can't reach."

"Did you recognize yourself in that other man?"

"Yes."

As the therapist checked the clock and finally reached inside the top drawer, fingers already grasping his pack of cigarettes, the last question of the night hovered in the space between them.

"When you looked at this man… when you saw  _yourself_  in that man, what did you see? What made you feel that this other man was, in fact, you?"

_Your eyes gave you away._

"We are the same piece of shit."


	51. Dance With The One Who Brought You

Arc VI

Chapter LI

**Dance With The One Who Brought You**

* * *

 " _Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me."_

Isabel Allende ― The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir

* * *

"She was murdered," Black said in a matter of seconds, saving the barrister the need to explain the obvious. If Rosario had died of natural causes, then they wouldn't be trapped in what seemed to be a paradigmatic predicament. The doctor eyed him suspiciously, only to come to the stage of realizing that the truth voiced by the mercenary had been an evident one – their absence had opened up the gates for the Syndicate to step up and claim the brothel as their uncompromised territory. Getting rid of Rosario seemed like an obvious priority.

"That's why you need an alibi in order to return, I'm afraid."

"How did she die? When?" The gunslinger asked.

"Poison, boy,” Yvo explained. “Her body was found yesterday evening. She was in her bedroom, they thought she was asleep."

"Can't you just tell them you sent me on a special mission or something?" Black inquired, his arms soaring in rage. "Tell them I was tracking the portals or following some lead, I'm sure you’ll come up with something good."

"Of course, I can," the old man said, his eyes finding Alexandra. "But you're not the problem, boy. She is."

It became crystal clear then, for both of them, that no plot could ever justify Alexandra's absence. Black's figure could be covered by a million different stories and every single one of them would seem plausible enough so no-one would neither deny nor object Yvo's excuses. But there was no reason for the doctor to be gone. As the woman looked down, her complicated actuality set heavily on her soul: not only her absence was completely unjustified but returning  _with_  Black, at the exact same moment, would be suspicious even for the most benevolent crowd. Now she was wearing different clothes, she had even changed the color of her hair… pretty much as if she was on the run, pretty much as if she was trying to hide.

"There's something else," the barrister went on. "Rosario's last will and testament."

Black's hands traveled all the way up to his face to cover his wide-eyed gaze.

"What about it?"

"Rosario chose her as her only heir," Yvo announced. "She came by my office the day after you two crossed the portal. Perhaps she could sense you two were leaving her unprotected, and so she felt the need to make sure the Syndicate couldn't rise while you were gone."

A part of Rosario knew, deep down, that both Black and the doctor would return. It was painfully obvious now, Black pondered, otherwise the old manager wouldn't have bothered to make sure Alexandra would be the chosen one to succeed her. It had been her plan all along: no matter what Alex said; no matter how many times she had expressed she didn't want to become the manager of The House of Pleasure, in the end, Rosario had managed to get exactly what she wanted.

"Rosario's testament names one Alexandra Flynn as her only heir," Yvo explained. "The name was unfamiliar for most people except for one of the girls: El-A, who quickly pointed out that it was you, my dear."

El-A had heard Black calling her Alex, the doctor remembered bitterly. Looking back, El-A's discovery had precipitated her decision, forcing her towards Black and, in retrospective, towards the portal.

"Now, you cannot say, under any circumstance, that you were in Earthrealm," the barrister sentenced. "The Kahn is quite invested in this case; Rosario was a figure of influence, especially amongst the people known as  _the oppressed_."

Black scratched his chin and stood up, pacing around the small room.

"Telling the truth could lead us to questions we wouldn't want to answer," he said. "If we confess that Alex is an Earthrealmer and that she has spent over a decade working for Rosario but only now she crossed the portal because she was trying to go back home they’ll ask why she didn’t join the census when she had the chance.”

"Not just that," the doctor's voice, finally, interrupted Black's train of thought. "If I could cross through a portal  _and_  return, that means that I don't accept the Kahn's order that there's no place for Earthrealmers in Outworld. I would become a liability the second they notice that I was able to move so easily between realms. I crossed the portal  _then_  I returned. Most people can't do that. The only ones who can move so freely from one realm to the other and back are…"

"The traffickers working for the Syndicate," Black finished her sentence. "Ironically enough, that scenario would place you at the opposite end of this conflict."

"If I were you, I'd stay hidden for as long as possible," the barrister offered. "You can stay at my house; I won't be leaving this place any time soon."

Both Black and the doctor shook their heads simultaneously: they couldn't just hide away and wait for the commotion to be over. Rosario deserved more than that. They both deserved more than that.

"Please, I beg you to consider it," Yvo insisted. "At least wait until the memorial is over. I don't remember seeing the crowds so agitated, not even during the attacks. You need to understand the magnitude of this situation: Rosario was the queen of the oppressed, not even the Kahn could cross her, and still, she was murdered."

The Syndicate was rising. Their dark wings were enveloping the city.

"I want to attend her memorial," the doctor whispered. "I owe her that much."

Yvo shook his head in silent contemplation: he could understand what she was feeling but exposing herself in such a foolish way was beyond his comprehension. He looked at Black; the bridge built by his eyes was silently trying to tell him to at least try to talk some sense into her, but the mercenary's answer only startled him more.

"We’ll both go. When and where?"

"In two days, The House of Pleasure," the barrister said. "The Kahn believes that an open memorial can deliver some sense of closure to the people."

"A simple memorial won't do that much," Black retorted. "Only justice will."

The doctor stood up, leaning her back against the door.

"Did she, by any chance, tell you how was she justifying my absence in the brothel?"

Yvo looked down and breathed through parted lips. "She told them that you and Black were together and that you needed some time after what happened during the carnival. But that's all she said."

Silence encompassed them all for a brief moment. Then the barrister stood up as well and walked towards the door.

"Let me get you some clothes, you can't be seen like that," he said as he exited the room. As soon as they were alone, the woman let her arms snake around the mercenary's waist, her face buried in his chest.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his fingers lost in the ginger bonfire of her hair. Lost in the warm embrace they were sharing, neither of them heard Yvo as he reentered the small room. He was carrying two brown, long-sleeved tunics and a scroll. The design was simple and somewhat old-fashioned, resembling the typical attire of monks or religious figures. As he handed them the clothes, the barrister patted Black on the shoulder with his free hand and took a step back – he couldn't contain the truth for much longer, he knew.

"I spoke to your superior the second Rosario left my office," he said, voice leveled. "I told him the same thing she said to the people over at The House of Pleasure, that you two were together."

"What?" An enraged Black asked, throwing the tunic aside. "Why would you do that?"

He didn't have an alibi anymore.

"I needed to make sure your superior wouldn't talk to the emperor," Yvo defended himself. "He came to me first, and he was looking for an answer. You know how much that man despises you, boy, I couldn't risk it; I could not make up a false assignment for you, what if he came looking for you? The second he smelled the lie he could talk to the Kahn himself. I was only trying to keep us all safe. As safe as I could."

Black's hands balled up in fists, but the doctor grabbed him by the shoulder, keeping him from harming the old man.

"You lied to me," the gunslinger yelled, unable to believe Yvo had played him in such a way.

"I needed to protect you," Yvo pleaded.

"From what?" An enraged Black asked, struggling against the doctor's tight grip around his arm.

"From going back to prison," the barrister raised his voice trying his best to make his friend see the obvious. "They would have thrown you back in that cell and they would have hung me for lying to the Throne. Without me out there, looking after you, you would have been left to rot like that corpse you used to talk to!" He was panting, nearly breathless, "I could not bring myself to risk and potentially destroy the very thing that Rosario was trying to protect!"

"What do you mean?" The doctor inquired timidly as she released Black.

The old man sat on the ground, with his back against the wall for support.

"You are in the testament too, boy," he confessed. "She is the heir, but Rosario chose  _you_  as the new manager of The House of Pleasure. She knew Alexandra didn't want the exposure, so she spared her. She secured Alexandra's future and ensured her protection: she knew that with you in charge, no-one would dare harm her. It was her last chance, the last ace up her sleeve, Erron. She knew she wouldn't last long without you there, so she made sure the Syndicate's biggest enemy would be the one taking her place."

Both Alex and Black took several steps back, contemplating the situation with eyes full of surprise: Rosario had played her cards well; she knew they would be back eventually. She understood they needed each other so she made them partners. What they had struggled to achieve, the understanding they had lacked for over a decade, she had provided it for them to finally come together as one.

"Does Kotal know about the testament?" Erron finally asked, finding his own voice after several minutes of complete silence and Yvo nodded his head and offered him the scroll that was still resting between his hands. Then he gave the couple a pen for them both to sign Rosario's last will and testament, making it official.

Black snatched the pen from the barrister's hand and signed furiously, unable to contain his evident anger. The woman was much calmer, letting the ink slide almost harmonically on the paper as she finished her signature. Then she handed the scroll back to the barrister, stretching her arm as an attempt to reach for the man without leaving Black's side.

"What about his job?" Alex asked, leaning forward and resting her hands on Black's shoulders.

"Your superior addressed you as a deserter. He claimed he could not believe you were willing to risk your life for a whore. You no longer work for the garrison, I'm afraid, not that you were ever happy working for it," the barrister explained. "You both know that under Kotal's law, deserters are executed. But I talked to him and convinced him not to play with fire. He won't touch you, Erron. You're safe."

"Of course, he won't. If the citizens are so agitated after Rosario's death, the emperor is not gonna risk making it all worse by touching the brand new manager, the one she herself chose," the mercenary figured. "The manager of The House of Pleasure is a clear figure of influence and power, and peace has been scarce around this place lately."

"Precisely," Yvo concurred. "Rosario spared you both, in all possible ways."

"Still, we can't just reappear out of nowhere," the doctor said. "Even if we are the heir and the new manager, we would be targeted as prime suspects the minute we step out of this building."

"Then we make it legal."

Black's words, simple yet determined, sounded like an alarm ringing unceasingly in the doctor's ears. Her mouth was agape, unsure if her interpretation had been accurate enough. Something seemed to have changed within him, resolution had found him once more. Yvo was having an equally hard time trying to figure out what the mercenary had meant with those few words. With arms folded over his chest, the old Edenian barrister let out a prolonged sigh before tilting his head to the side in silent contemplation.

"We eloped. That's what we did, that's what we  _say_  we did," Black affirmed, trying to engage both the barrister and the doctor in his outspoken elucubrations. The woman shivered at the thought; even when she tried hard not to look insecure, a million questions inside her mind were getting the best of her.

"Think it over, it makes perfect sense," the gunman continued, standing up straight and moving toward the confused woman. "El-A saw us together and she's been talking about us ever since that night. That's why we  _had_  to elope because we want to be together but we both know I'm not welcome in The House of Pleasure" He placed his hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently as he spoke. "We didn't want to be found, that's why you changed your hair," he said as he let one his hands get lost in her rebel auburn locks. "And maybe Rosario knew something like this could happen, so she prepared her last will and testament as soon as we left to make sure that even with us gone, the Syndicate could not choose her successor."

The uncertainties that had plagued Yvo moments ago had now vanished from his face. Black was right: it made sense. Twisting a few details here and there with enough care and precision could provide them all with the perfect story they were seeking.

"We shall arrange a marriage contract then; first we need to find civilians we can use as witnesses of your formal union," the barrister suggested, already engrossed in Black's plotting but as soon as he said those words both the former enforcer and the doctor eyed each other in silent agreement: bringing civilians into their scheme wouldn't work - not only they could potentially jeopardize the whole scheme, but they also needed to address that Black was still a polemic member of the community and people would surely be in for a big surprise the minute they discovered that he would be in charge of the brothel.

There would surely come a day when they would call him The King of the Oppressed, but until that happened, they needed to be cautious about who they let into their secret pact.

While Yvo and Black had found some common ground, the doctor seemed dubious about the plan and her body language showed.

"It's not so bad," he said, looking tenderly at her. "I could break the Syndicate from the inside."

She had never thought she would ever marry someone other than Nathan. Even during all her years in the brothel, she had managed to keep a small portion of her hope intact in case someday a miracle would come her way. Opposite to the certainty that Nathan had been for her, Black had always been a distant harbor she knew she could not reach in spite of her best efforts - so he had mutated many times inside her core, like a prism exhibiting completely different shades every time: the object of her desire, her affection, her fear, her resentment, and even her hatred.

Her  _husband_.

Earthrealm had toyed with their bond. The realm had brought them together in such a macabre way that now their fates seemed to be forever intertwined. Still, he was not naming love as his main reason to marry her; those lips of his were talking about power and revenge but love… love was still not a part of his speech.

"We're talking about getting married," she finally said, her voice nearly extinguished.

"I already did it once, to help a friend get closer to the power he was seeking; to help a woman be free from the life you had to endure for so long," Black offered, moving closer to her now until his hands landed on her shoulders, pushing her near him. "I can do it again. I can do it for me this time, and I can definitely do it for you."

It was his closest approximation to love, she understood as she remembered how his mouth had been unable to fully express everything he felt for her back in Earthrealm. Tangled and twisted, his words and his feelings were a labyrinth keeping him captive. It would take some time for the man to be free from his own riddles and she could only hope she had the energy to help him out of his own sentimental imprisonment.

He reached out for her, offering her one of his hands for the woman to accept him as her husband. The doctor hesitated briefly, taking a dubious step forward and giving him a puzzled look. Yet her fingers touched his eventually, as she gave him her silent acceptance in the shape of a weak caress.

Yvo grinned softly at himself at the scene. It wasn't the fondest, most eloquent declaration of love he had seen but it was enough. All things considered, it was more than enough.

The old Edenian man stood up and approached the lonely wooden desk placed at the opposite end of the room. In seconds, both the cowboy and the woman observed him as he produced a sheet of paper and a pen from the top drawer. Then he beckoned the couple to come closer and they both obliged, walking hand in hand as clumsily as they could, trying their best to avoid eye contact for as long as humanly possible.

As Yvo began to write, Alexandra Flynn began to disappear. She was lost now in the bright ocean of light encompassing that portal. She had been buried in that cemetery; the name speaking of an eternal absence. She had crossed the portal seeking a past that was hers no more and had fell when said past had slapped her hard across the face. Then she had returned, hand in hand, just like now, with the one man who had tried to end her, love her, understand her, help her… she had returned to a dangerous world she couldn't fully recognize as her own; had returned with a soul tarnished by uncertainties.

She had returned without a future.

She had seen her man; had seen the son he had chosen to have with another woman. She had seen the resemblance between those faces: the man she had loved and the one she was now marrying. And at that moment, she could see the bridge in his eyes beginning to break, demolishing the distance between generations; the distance and the similarities in those two women he had grown to love, the one who had made him a father and the one he was marrying now.

For they, the embodiment of second chances, were finally beginning to see eye to eye.

When Yvo paused and looked up at the couple, he saw the first symptoms of content beginning to set on their faces. He smiled quietly, feeling somewhat relieved.

"So," he began, "you got married and then left town; Rosario's orders. She knew the Syndicate was about to strike so she convinced you it was better for you two to disappear. She was protecting you; she was protecting the ones she trusted the most. Sadly, her suspicions came true and now I've come to you to tell you the news about her death – to grant her her last wish." He handed them the pen for the couple to sign the marriage contract. "Everything changed after the carnival. Rosario knew it would be impossible for Alex to stay in the brothel for much longer. They all knew Rosario wanted you as her successor but they also knew your heart belonged to this man, the Syndicate's most dangerous enemy."

Black was the first to sign, then it was the doctor's turn.

"Rosario feared they would target Alex, so she convinced you to run away together. She knew you would not leave her side, boy, she knew you would always protect her. But when the syndicate learned about your absence, they precipitated their decision thinking you would never be back. They attacked a defenseless Rosario without knowing that she had already secured the future of The House of Pleasure."

Black handed the piece of paper back to the barrister and watched as Yvo himself signed at the bottom as one of the witnesses of their union. The name of the second witness was still waiting to be filled, just like the date of the contract.

"Alexandra, tell me, are you familiar with Rosario's signature?" The barrister asked and the doctor nodded once. "Perfect. Then she can be our second witness. You got married on the same day you went away. Rosario told me that you had surely spent the night at Erron's and that you hadn't returned to the brothel yet - we can use that information in our favor: you spent the night with him and the following morning the both of you and Rosario came by my office. Many people saw Rosario entering my office that morning, so it is completely plausible. That morning, Rosario and I finished working on her last will and testament and you both signed it, accepting her offer. Then you got married, on that same day, with only Rosario and me as your witnesses. You were worried, boy, now that you two were about to run away together, because Alexandra was not an Outworlder, so you naturalized her, by marrying her."

The plot complete, the doctor leaned in and finally signed as Rosario. A steady pulse dominating her calligraphy.

"Since it was all part of Rosario's plan to protect you, you couldn't get married at a regular office in the Family Tribunal of Outworld where anyone could see you. It needed to remain a secret," the barrister concluded. Black shook the old man's hand; a gentlemen's agreement had been arranged, the tacit silence enveloping them now was more than eloquent. Now the three of them were partners in the quest of taking down the Syndicate. Rosario had given them her everything: Alex had her money, and Erron had all her power. If they played their cards right, they would be untouchable. They could truly have it all.

As Yvo wrote the date on the contract, Black stared at his brand-new wife: Alexandra Black, the name they had used back in Earthrealm was now a premonition that had come true.

"Our work here is done," Yvo sentenced, standing up and extending his hand for the doctor to shake it. "And since I found you, and I told you the news about Rosario's tragic demise, you can go now. I suggest the three of us visit the brothel tomorrow morning, we need to tell them about your new positions. Brace yourselves, though, they won't be happy about it."

One night was separating them from The House of Pleasure. One last night of complete freedom. One last night before submitting themselves to countless questions and vicious retaliation.

"Where to?" The woman asked, holding Black's hand.

"Home."


	52. Tame That Fire

Arc VI

Chapter LII

**Tame That Fire**

* * *

 " _I did not find him absurd. I saw he was kind, that he was on the verge of real love. I thought it would be nice for me to be in love with him, too."_

Françoise Sagan ― Bonjour Tristesse

* * *

Walking down the streets at night, hand in hand, still didn't feel right somehow. There was a certain resentment for the past, an unhealable wound carved deep into their skins, lacerating their visions and tarnishing the fragile bond keeping them together against all odds. Too much had happened in only seven days. Their lives had changed in unthinkable ways. His past had been larger than he imagined; her past had not waited for her to come back. They had both romanced death; waltzing the final tune of darkness and oblivion. Rosario was dead. Now they were married and the notion of such a sacred union seemed both impeccably tailored and whimsically meaningless. Yet the feeling was there, underneath their skins, subjugated by regrets and the sorrow, barely struggling to survive.

He had seen it in her eyes. Sparkling faintly through the clouds, barely visible. But real, nonetheless.

A few blocks away from their destination, the cowboy's march came to a halt. He knew how much she disliked his room and although their new positions as heir and manager of the House of Pleasure were almost ensuring the fact that they would soon have to move back to the brothel, the man understood that the least he could do for that woman was to try to offer her a pleasant, quiet night away from the chaotic visions of tomorrow.

They walked back East, just a few blocks past the Barristers' Office, to the only bar in town that was still open: a godforsaken little redoubt mostly deserted except for the occasional drunk sleeping with their faces touching the filthy counter. Not exactly a romantic destination, he knew, but at least her face was beginning to show some signs of life.

They sat by the last table, the one facing the largest window in the room. Candlelight struggled to maintain the mood of such an awkward night as the timid flame flickered in the air, fighting to stay alive. Their drinks, much like the place, were nothing special. Outworld liquor was sour and arrogant in its own way; a cheap imitation that could never become the very thing it was trying to emulate. Still, her smile didn't look forced or unnatural, far from it. At least, she seemed happy  _enough_ ; happy he had decided not to take her to his house, happy that, at least, they would have one night to themselves before hell itself burned them both to the ground.

It felt like a responsibility to him to at least provide her with a night of tranquility after everything they had been through.

As tense as he was, Black couldn't hide his surprise when the doctor cupped his hands with hers. So much had happened in the last week that now it was hard for the man to remember she could be warm and affectionate from time to time. But when the time came for the newlyweds to make a toast, both of them chose silence over words. Just the clicking of their surprisingly clean glasses broke the soundless scene, sheltering their minds from the events of such confusing days. As soon as their glasses were empty, Black stood up and walked up to the bar. He paid for their drinks and then made his way back to the table where the doctor was waiting for him. He moved her chair and offered her his hand for the woman to stand up but instead of guiding her towards the exit, the gunman signaled the stairs at their back. A tremulous shiver ran down her spine as she realized the man had booked a room for the night.

Her polite smile was not enough to completely masquerade her uneasiness. Still, when the time came, his steady hands guided her upstairs and into a simple room with a large window and only one bed.

He sensed her nervousness the second he closed the door. It was heartwarming, in a way.

"I bet this is not how you imagined you'd spend your wedding night," he said, carefully avoiding the fact that, in the first place, she had never imagined she would be sharing her wedding night with him.

The woman nodded once, allowing a minuscule grin to curl up her lips.

"Then you better wait till the honeymoon," Black joked, causing her timid grin to turn into a full smile.

"Any destination in mind?" She asked, deciding to join him on his attempt at breaking the ice.

The gunslinger scratched his chin and offered her a questioning look; his eyes, seemingly lost in thought, were trying their best to help her find some peace.

"I hear the Kove is nice this time of the year," he offered. "Sorry, were you thinking about Rome, or maybe Paris?"

She laughed out loud and ultimately nodded her head, playing along as she moved closer to the petite table placed beneath the window; the one with many bottles of wine and two small cups.

"Some liquid courage…" She reckoned with a quick glance over the shoulder. "Special service for newlyweds, I assume?"

Black shook his head as he walked up to her.

"I just told them we needed a room to spend the night. Technically, we've been married for over a week now." He was right. Yvo's plot had put an exact date to their imposed union and bending such margins was a risk they could not afford to take. "Do you need it, though? Liquid courage? ‘Cos, I know I sure do," he lied as he took one of the bottles and poured some wine for them.

He proposed a new toast, this time, with words. "To my second wife," he began, purposefully avoiding eye contact. "I thought one was more than enough but here I am…"

The doctor drank her wine in silence, noticing the growing distance in his eyes - those cloudy eyes of his, the ones she had learned to read like an open book. She grimaced as she let her now empty cup rest on the table and moved towards the bed, taking off the tunic Yvo had given her to help her blend in. When she heard him sigh ever so softly, the doctor sat cross-legged on the bed, ready to let him guide her through the night as if in need of a compass, a North to show her where to go, what to do.

He noticed.

"It's just a paper," he said. "We don't have to do anything. It can be just a formality, it's completely up to you."

She rubbed her hands against her legs, trying to get rid of the sweat covering her palms, then she looked down.

He noticed.

He noticed  _her_.

"I want to make a deal with you," Black offered. "Let's leave Earthrealm back in Earthrealm." His simple words were saying much more than what was plainly contained inside those syllables. He was trying his best to build a bridge between them; a solid bridge that could last during the storm waiting ahead.

Alexandra grinned quietly to herself as she beckoned him to move closer to her.

"It's gonna be tough," she whispered, her mind flooded with painful memories of Earthrealm. "But I can try… I  _will_  try, but you have to do the same." Those demanding eyes of hers were about to make a deal with the devil; those eyes were begging him to seal that portal and never look back on everything and everyone they had lost along the way.

It was the  _only_  way.

Her hands landed on his chest, as he stood in front of her, still and stoic, giving her time and space to decide what she wanted to do. When her fingertips began to draw concentric circles across his torso, Black held one of her hands in place and stared deeply into her eyes as she kneeled on the bed and moved closer, unbearably close to him. The doctor pecked him on the lips, shyly, then nuzzled her face on his neck, breaking all possible distance and allowing his free arm to wrap her waist in its warm, comfortable embrace. There she stayed, for a little while, until he released her and helped her down on the bed. She lay on her back, eyes trained on the ceiling as the man loomed over her and moved his body, arms and legs soaring, creating figures in the ceiling.

She deduced, from the shadows moving all around her now, that he was taking off his clothes.

"Have you ever wished for something so badly that in the end, even waiting for it to happen became ridiculous?" She asked, propping herself up with her hands.

All his movements came to a halt as the man loomed over her once more, hands landing at the sides of her shoulders. One of the doctor's hands brushed against his tattoo, carefully tracing each line with nervous fingertips.

"When did you get this?" Alexandra asked, trying her best to delay the moment for as long as possible and Black smiled quietly as he sat on the bed, offering the woman one of his hands for her to sit up as well.

"Back in the seventies," he said as he cupped her hand with his own. "I needed to cover a rather gruesome scar. I never really minded scars, chicks dig 'em after all…" he laughed, "but this one was different. I didn't want to keep this scar."

The woman kissed the design, trying her best to find the wound with lips eager to explore. Yet time had already worked its magic, fading the pain, hiding its original texture.

"And why did you choose to keep this one instead?" The woman stared into his eyes as her hands found the brand on his shoulder.

He smirked, bitterly.

"Because that brand is a testament to me."

"You're not the only one," Alex whispered, standing up and taking off her clothes. The number tattooed on her ankle and the brand on her shoulder were still there, corrupting her anatomy. He could still remember the first time he had laid eyes on all those marks. He would never forget.

They had never really talked about what they felt for each other; they never really had the time. Finding the right moment and searching for the exact words to say were tasks they could not bring themselves to complete. And suddenly they were married. Naked. Exposed. And nervous. Just like a couple of inexperienced teenagers toying on the very verge of adulthood.

He kissed her gently on the lips before getting into bed, covering his body with the bedsheets and crossing his arms over his chest. The woman stared at him from the small window of distance he had just created; eyes wandering his face as if searching for something. A certainty, or maybe an answer.

"Tomorrow morning, when we get home, your eyes will want to move the walls around in order to make the place more spacious… but they won't succeed," he began, stretching one of his hands and caressing her shoulder. "I got nothin' to offer. Nothin' worthy of a wife. Maybe the brothel, as lame as that place is, could be a better place for you."

"And for  _you_ , as well," she said, moving closer again, seeking contact. "We're married now; we're supposed to live together, Erron. Like husband and wife."

His hand stopped all possible motions, landing heavily on her forearm.

"Like husband and wife," he whispered pensively, letting the echo of his baritone voice linger in the small space between them. "I don't want you to feel that kind of pressure. Things have always been complicated for us, ever since we met… it's always been hard for us. For me to get through to you, for you to get through to me…" Black went on as Alexandra let her head rest on his chest, arms anchored to his figure. "We don't have to do anything, really."

"Black…"

He cupped her hands in his, sweetly.

"I know we feel closer to each other now; Earthrealm has done this much for us. But things are changing this side of the portal as well: Rosario is gone, we both know it affects us both professionally  _and_ emotionally. Now we are part of a plan we didn't exactly plan for ourselves," he felt her fingers digging into his skin, as if trying to chain themselves to his body. "I know it's frightening; it  _should_  be frightening. Even for me."

His impeccable sense of comprehension surprised her once again. It was nice to be with someone who could see clearly through the smoke, it was nice to know he was willing to try his best even when she was certain the man was mostly seeking revenge. In her mind, the vertiginous torrent of change was already in motion; the House of Pleasure was destined to become their base of operations, she would be the one behind the money and he would be the one shaking hands with friends in high places, juggling foes and power in order to survive.

They were partners.

 _Finally_.

When she felt his lips on her forehead, the woman looked him in the eye and propped herself up with her elbows, sitting awkwardly on his stomach. Svelte fingers removed the rest of her clothes, exposing her anatomy entirely for his eyes to reckon her as his. But her eyes succumbed to the pressure as her forehead reached for his chest. He guided her chin up, eager to find her eyes, but she looked away.

He sat up straight on the bed, flexing his knees, containing her in his warmth.

"I can book a separate room for me if you want," he offered. "I can sleep on the floor, I don't mind."

She laughed, bitterly.

"Erron Black, a true gentleman… who would have thought."

He smiled.

"A true gentleman would be wearing some clothes," he said. "A true gentleman wouldn't have you naked on top of him."

One adventurous hand landed on her chin and descended slowly; a thin, strictly straight trajectory across her neck, her breasts, and her belly.

"At least I didn't have to worry about the groom misbehaving during his bachelor party," she said, welcoming his touch, learning his skin.

"But now your husband is the manager of a brothel. Funny, huh?"

She punched his shoulder lightly then laughed.

"Well, at least I married the manager."

The woman bit her lower lip, forcing him to lean his body forwards and trap her entire mouth in his. Then their smiles coalesced briefly, forehead against forehead.

"You know, growing up, everyone used to tell me not to marry a whore," he whispered.

"I haven't been a whore in a very long time, Black."

He nodded. Proudly. Satisfied.

The cowboy kissed her gently on the lips before sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands resting on his thighs, her hair brushing his shoulders. She was trying her best to be brave, even when the man could feel her uncertainties – to fall for a man that cannot age, to leave her whole life behind and face a brand new threat… breathing softly through parted lips, the mercenary felt her lips traveling across his collarbone.

"I've always had a thing for older men," she said. "When I found out Nathan had lied to me about his age, that he was younger than me… I nearly killed him."

That name again, ill-natured and deprived of all plausibility, was exiting her lips again.

It wouldn't be easy, he knew. It wouldn't be fast; it wouldn't be magical.

When he looked over his shoulder and trapped her adventurous chin with his fingers, the man sensed the doubt inside those big, blue eyes of hers – if he was the right man for her or not, if she was ever going to feel what he was feeling.

"Is that why you like me?"

The fire ignited inside her eyes, made him see his own face inside that eternal bonfire of hers. With one swift movement of his arms, he had her trapped in his lap, his hands roaming every piece of her anatomy. Her body was a lesson he was willing to learn; such hunger, he knew, such thirst, could not be satisfied with mere crumbs.

The unexpected knocking on their door prevented his lips from devouring hers once again, so the man stood up and wrapped the sheets around his waist to cover his naked body. Then he walked up to the door with quiet steps and an unreadable expression on his face.

"Excuse me, sir," the waiter began, apologetically. "I forgot to mention: breakfast is served between 8:30 and 10:30."

Black nodded in silence, patting the young man gently on his shoulder. Then he closed the door and walked back to the bed.

She was asleep.

Pulling the hair back from her eyes, the ancient gunslinger lay beside her, stretching his arms only to pull her closer to his chest. He closed his eyes feeling the warmth of her cheeks against his skin. A peculiar feeling of completion overwhelmed him as he rocked her in his arms ever so tenderly.

It was good she was asking him for time.

Time was the only thing he had to give.


	53. Canción de la Noche

Arc VI

Chapter LIII

**Canción de la Noche**

* * *

 " _There was a house we all had in common and it was called the past, even though we'd lived in different rooms."_

Angela Carter - Wise Children

* * *

When the morning finally came, it became evident that awkwardness was no longer in the payroll. They were married now, they were partners, but above all that, the long journey they had traveled together had solidified the thread that was now officially knitting them together. Business or pleasure seemed to be the question now but only for a brief moment, as the mercenary looked over his shoulder, addressing his brand-new wife.

"Before we go back to the House of Pleasure, I'd like to stop by my place," he said. "if I'm gonna live there, with you, I'd like to gather my belongings first."

The woman nodded softly as she took a good look at herself in the mirror: her physical appearance had changed so much in so little time she could already hear the hurricane of questions they were surely going to throw her way the minute they entered the brothel. Rosario's right hand, Dakota, had simply vanished one day. But the woman returning now had a different name, a different look, and a controversial husband.

The walk from the hotel to Black's place was not long enough to silence the voices inside her head: would they be able to recognize her in the shape of this stranger, or perhaps they would be too busy trying to link her sudden return to Rosario's death?

Politely, the gunman brushed the woman's shoulder as an attempt to bring her back to reality; the reality that was the room she hated so much. Those oppressing walls were still there, combined with the total lack of a proper sense of coziness. He tried his best to be quick and resolute about things – there wasn't much that he possessed, after all, most of his memories, most of the parts of himself that had once defined him had been locked up in a box a lifetime ago.

Easy to carry and also, easy to ignore.

But the biggest surprise came when the woman looked under his bed and found the bottles. Twenty-four bottles of fine wine. With a puzzled expression, Alexandra grabbed one and stared at the cowboy, looking for an answer.

"I didn't steal the bottles," he clarified, "if you look closely, these are a different brand but that's the only brand I could get."

"But," she mumbled, still confused. "I had forgotten about the missing bottles… in a way, it feels like it happened a million years ago but why, Black? Why did you buy all these bottles?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Because somebody has to pay for what's been stolen… eventually. The girls don't have any money and the whole issue with the missing bottles came to light because I exposed it because you gave me a job," he explained as he moved closer to her. "I bet there's gonna be someone willing to say the whole thing happened on your watch."

He had clearly bought the bottles before Earthrealm; the man she had called a beast a thousand times had been looking out for her the whole time.

"For you," he said, "I did it for you."

"You didn't have to."

He offered her a sarcastic smile.

"A simple  _thank you_  would have sufficed," the man offered as she smiled nervously, not really knowing if the gesture was because she still couldn't voice the words or if, perhaps, she was getting embarrassed by all the times the gunman had offered a helping hand without hesitating.

"You sound suspiciously carefree, given our current situation, but I'm still concerned that, despite what Yvo has planned, El-A will still try to frame us for Rosario's murder."

"She's just a brat," Black said disdainfully. "She is connected, I won't deny that, but connections alone are not enough to win this war." He sat down next to her, looking into her eyes. "These people have already tried the explosive rebellion and it didn't work; they only caused fear instead of increasing their numbers… now they've chosen to smuggle goods from one realm to the other as their way to corrupt Outworld's laws but if we have a leader in the House of Pleasure, one of our own, we will also gain a figure of influence in the Palace – if Kotal is smart, he won't oppose our leadership because deep down he knows we share the same goal."

His speech was eloquent, yet the colors of her doubt set in her eyes.

"He didn't hesitate way back then, remember?" The doctor said. "He put you in jail, Erron,"

"That was a different thing, back then," he remembered bitterly. "What happened back then was… well, it was almost personal. But this is different. If we can convince him to fight our fight; if we can convince him that there's only one cause to defend…"

She cupped his hands with her own and took a deep breath – those hands of his, shaky and sweaty, were silently giving him away.

"There is there's something I want you to have," the woman reached under her tunic and tried to hand him the gun he had given her back in Earthrealm and the mercenary hesitated for a moment, contemplating the dangers they were surely about to face. Then he withdrew his hands, shaking his head, but the woman insisted. "I really don't know what I'm capable of with this thing in my possession and you know it; you saw me there, Black,"

Kneeling in the rain, before her own grave, with the tip of his gun pressed firmly against her forehead.

He swallowed hard, trying his best to stay calm as the memory presented itself before him. "If you…" he was choosing his words as carefully as possible, "want to hurt yourself, I'm afraid there's not much I can do; I can't watch over you all the time… I do trust you, but I can't trust the people we're gonna find the second we go back to the House of Pleasure. You should keep this gun," he placed his hands atop the weapon and went on, "and if I'm not there, if… for whatever reason you find yourself alone, defend yourself."

The doctor shook her head.

"I’m supposed to save lives, not take them," she looked down. "I don't think I got what it takes to pull the trigger."

He said nothing, and simply put his arms around her shoulders and embraced her for a moment of shared silence.

"The point of this whole thing is," he said, "if we succeed, is for you to have the chance to be whoever you want to be and start anew," the mercenary tightened the embrace as he lowered his voice. "When this whole thing is over, you'll get to decide who you really want to be for the rest of your life. Here, there… anywhere."

"Then perhaps these belong in your box of memories now," the woman said as she rescued the pictures they had brought back from Earthrealm. "I know I said I don't want to be yet another souvenir in your collection of mementos from the past, but if we're gonna do this, then bygones need to be bygones." The box was a cage for souls and lives that were no more so those faces, those expressions of yesterday she was holding in her hands were now trapped in the limbo that Black had procured for his own past, eons ago.

"You can put as many pictures as you want inside this box," he said, "but the memories won't be locked up for long: they're sneaky, they always find a way out." He opened his box and revealed to her the trinkets of his past – simple objects, consumed by time and distance, markers of a man that no longer existed. But the newspaper articles caught her eyes, disguised among his memories, old yet newer than the items he had collected over the years.

"Back in Earthrealm, you were not the only one playing detective," he said. "You were famous back then; you made the headlines of several local newspapers with the news about your disappearance." He looked down, as if afraid to ask. "You never really said how on earth you ended up in a shithole like this."

"I know," she whispered, suddenly looking down as well. "I just… Someday…" she took one of the articles but couldn't get past the first sentence. Still fresh, the wound was making it impossible for the woman to read her own story.

"I learned a great deal about you by reading those articles," Black confessed. "Now I know that, for example, your birthday is on October 18th. Now, I've always had my suspicions that days in Outworld are shorter, but if I'm not mistaken we're about five and a half months away from your birth…"

"Why did you show me those articles?" she interrupted him. "You knew they were inside the box and you opened the damn thing anyway; you knew I was going to see them."

"You were the one who suggested keeping the photographs inside the box," he defended himself, raising both his hands, "and I got nothin' to hide." He stood up, placed both his hands at the sides of his waist and exhaled loudly as the woman watched him in silence as if she was still waiting for an answer.

"I did it for you," he said, "and yes, I'm aware I might sound like a broken record, but that's the truth –  _he_  inspired me; everything that happened to  _me_  back there inspired me. I saw the look on your face when you saw him with that boy; I know he's the one you wanna be married to, not me." He walked back to the cot and grabbed one of the articles. "This man searched for you, he did everything in his power to find you…" he sat down, his hands resting on his lap. "When I heard that she had given up on our child, I hated Amanda. But then I took my time to really think things through and she did what she had to do." He looked into her eyes and held her hand "Your boyfriend did what he had to do: he moved on. Just don't think less of him because he tried to start anew. These articles here are the monument of his love for you."

"You know, Black… if you could manage to be only one man all the time… those articles, the bottles of wine you bought, these words you just said… if you could manage to be this man all the time, the one that cares, the one who tries, instead of that other man, the cold-hearted mercenary that buries his friends and counts his money."

"It's been a long ride so far, woman," the cowboy whispered, scratching the back of his head with his free hand, "and it won't get any easier from now on but I'm just tired of pretending you're not the one I," she embraced him quickly, killing all his words with a furtive kiss.

"Just don't say it," she said. "I know… I know, you tried to tell me many times, I know, but don't say it; just don't. It doesn't suit you, Black."

* * *

Yellow candles led the way back to the House of Pleasure, and a sea of strange faces walked alongside them as they mourned the woman that had brought them all together; the one that would always listen, the one they had chosen to become their one, true representative: the Queen of the Oppressed. But now there was a new queen sitting on a throne that should have remained empty. A queen no-one had elected, a blurry figure that represented no-one.

Sitting on Rosario's chair, wearing one of her dresses, El-A welcomed the couple as they stepped inside the brothel with nothing but an obvious disposition in mind: as long as she was occupying Rosario's place, the Syndicate would be able to rise and take control.

"How bold of you to come back here," the younger woman said, "and with  _him_ … things have changed around here, I'm sure you've heard."

"Rosario's been murdered," Black stated coldly. "We are here to assume our new positions, so thank you so much for filling in during our absence but we have much to do; we'll take it from here."

"I don't think so," El-A responded bluntly. "I'm the new manager of the House of Pleasure and you're not welcome anymore."

The doctor took a step forward, leaning on the bar with both her elbows.

"No, you're not."

"I know you were her favorite. In fact, we all know that," the younger woman began, "but as far as I'm concerned, you might as well be the ones who took Rosario’s life. It's a bit suspicious that you decided to come back now, you know? So, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, I suggest you leave before I call the authorities." She smiled disdainfully and stared at the cowboy. "Given his criminal record, I bet they wouldn't hesitate…"

"The authorities are here, my lovely," Yvo interrupted her as he stepped inside the brothel, "but I'm afraid they're right. Thank you so much for stepping in; the place needed a leader and what's better than the heart of a young, thriving woman willing to offer a helping hand? But Rosario's last will and testament is remarkably clear, I'm afraid," the old man went on, "Erron Black is the new manager of the House of Pleasure and his wife, Alexandra Flynn, is the new owner."

"Who the hell is…?" El-A questioned, but her mind traveled quickly to the memory of the night when she discovered that Dakota had been lying about her identity. "His wife? You married  _him_?"

The doctor nodded in silence.

"And Rosario, she…"

"She witnessed our union," the gunman said. "She knew our marriage could be rather controversial, so she was okay with us leaving for some time. What we didn't know back then is that she had other plans for us. We honestly had no clue about her will."

Stunned by the news, El-A stared at the doctor but was unable to articulate a single, coherent sentence.

"I don't know whom you're trying to impress, sweetheart, but you're startin' to look a bit ridiculous sitting on that chair," the cowboy sentenced as he walked around the bar, beckoning the rest of the girls to come to join them. "Until Rosario's memorial service is complete, this place will remain closed and all of you are expected to help during the funeral. After that, many things will change around here so if any of you has any sort of problem with the way I do things, the door's right over there." All of the girls lowered their heads for a brief moment and then they looked back up at the doctor – and Black noticed. "As for her," he said, "I can assure you that she's the same woman you used to know; only her name has changed but it's just a name so let me insist on this 'cos I believe this is vital: if any of you has a problem with something as stupid as a name, the door's right over there."

“What do you mean by changes? What's going to change now?" A young girl stepped up then, shyly yet resolute.

A surprised Black looked over his shoulder instinctively and stared at the doctor for a minuscule moment: he hadn't thought that far ahead. If he had to be completely honest with himself, he was only trying to intimidate them, but the new manager of the House of Pleasure didn't have a single plan for the establishment. Alexandra patted him lightly on the shoulder, with almost condescending patience.

"Rosario and I used to see eye to eye most of the time," the woman remembered, "but there was one topic we could never agree on. Now that she's not around anymore, I'd like to at least try the possibility to give you more control over your incomes. She used to say her girls have no income because they live here for free but that's not entirely true: the way I see it, you have the right to pursue a better life; a life outside this place." As she spoke, the girls' faces lit up with renewed interest; perhaps she was still the same woman they all used to know, maybe Black was right, and a name was just a name. "We'll have to sit down and have more than a couple discussions about it, but I'm positive we'll find a way to make things work in a more equitable manner."

As Rosario's girls surrounded the doctor and welcomed her back, the gunslinger breathed out loudly, resting one of his elbows on Yvo's shoulder.

"You've arrived just in time, old man," he joked, but the barrister's serious demeanor erased Black's mocking grin.

"We need to talk, boy," the barrister whispered, "in private."

Surrounded by a sea of familiar faces, the doctor observed as Black and Yvo became shadows past the tables and up the stairs but she couldn't find the strength to excuse herself and join them; the little peace she had suddenly found was way too fragile to endure yet another blow.

"What's going on?" Erron asked as soon as he closed the door. It surprised him to realize that Alexandra's former bedroom was much smaller than he remembered. "Why are you here?"

A tiny bottle. Brown. And empty.

"Rosario was poisoned," the barrister admitted, "but this product… I've never seen it before. Its components are not from around here."

"Around here?" A suspicious Black asked, frowning involuntarily at the thought.

"Outworld," Yvo said. "This poison has traveled a long way, boy."

Narrowing his eyes, the cowboy took the small container in his hand and inspected it briefly; the answer was bluntly written on the label: Bhertineslitsz Pharmaceuticals.

"I've been doing some research and that girl, El-A, she's connected," the barrister told Black. "Her boyfriend is connected as well and there's an uncle – I think she was stupid enough to believe that you and your wife would never be back, so she rushed things. As soon as you left, she ended Rosario. What she didn't know is that Rosario had been smart enough to include the two of you in her last will and testament, hence her surprise."

Black rolled his eyes in discontent, almost mocking the old Edenian barrister for merely stating the obvious.

"The connection is there, Yvo. The Syndicate, the trafficking from Earthrealm, El-A and her entire fucking family but how… how am I supposed to tell Alex that Rosario was murdered thanks to a substance her ex-boyfriend fabricates on a daily basis?" Black asked as he sat on her bed, holding his head in his hands.

"I really don't know, boy," Yvo offered simply, running his fingers through the cowboy's hair with the patience of a father. "But a little rest would do you good, Erron. Rosario's funeral is tomorrow, I think that woman deserves our respect. We'll fight this fight; we'll fight as many fights as necessary till we get to the bottom of this but first we honor her," the barrister concluded as he slowly left the room. "It's the least we can do for her."

* * *

Even if they didn't know exactly what had happened to Rosario, it was easy to sense the fear and the doubt inside the hearts of all the Outworlders that had joined the funeral for the former Queen of the Oppressed. Yellow candles all around, the silent mass of nameless faces walked down the streets and gathered around the House of Pleasure; the flames were burning already, waiting for the woman to join them in the last ritual of her existence.

The doctor was the first to join the congregation, followed by a handful of girls that quickly lost themselves in the multitude. For monsters and citizens alike, the occasion presented itself as a communal mourning; an altogether fraternal yearning where men and women, children and adults were finally free to express the sorrow that was now rooted deep inside their souls. The barrister was there, nearly lost in the crowd, but he wasn't the only representative of the Palace: Ferra and Torr were also there, embracing the night and the very concept of acceptance that it brought with it. For once, it was all right to be monsters in a land of chaos and corruption. For once, it was all right to walk with the people, sharing the same solemn sentiment. For once, it was all right to be who they really were.

In front of the House, white flowers and yellow candles improvised the altar where saints and sinners alike were to pay their final respects. The doctor brushed the coffin with cold fingertips then lowered her head for a brief instant until the old barrister tapped her shoulder.

"As the new owner of the House of Pleasure, you should say something to these people, dear," Yvo suggested but Alexandra simply shook her head.

"If I had to be honest, I'm still processing the very meaning of death," she offered somberly. "I recently found out that my parents are dead, now Rosario… I can't shake the feeling that if only I had been where I was supposed to be, all of them would still be alive."

Overhearing the conversation, the gunslinger walked up to her and placed his arms around her frame.

"Truth is, Yvo," she continued, "I still haven't had any time to cry. I still haven't had a single moment of honest, real intimacy to be with myself and mourn them; it's disrespectful, in a way, because the three of them helped me so much and I can't even find a single moment to say a prayer for them," she looked over her shoulder and stared deeply into Black's eyes. "I know she meant a lot to you too, Erron, but we can't stop this war now to sit down and cry, can we?"

He simply shook his head and kissed her forehead ever so lightly.

"This wasn't your fault," he tried to assure her, "none of this was your fault."

“But we should have known that something like this was bound to happen, Erron," she fought back. "The Syndicate was counting on El-A to take Rosario's place and she's greedy, you know what she's capable of… We should have known she would do anything in her power to become the new manager and, by leaving, we just made things easier for her."

"But she never thought you would be back, dear," Yvo said, trying to lessen the pain she was feeling, but the woman shook her head and leaned her back against the wall.

"He's right," Black offered, but it wasn't enough.

"And what difference does it make?" She asked them. "I'm back but Rosario is gone, she's not coming back and this war… we've already collected so many martyrs. Aalem, your wife, Rosario, we got so many people to avenge, we have to right so many wrongs none of this makes sense anymore. This quiet kind of war they bring with subtlety and poison… the Rebel Seekers were messy, they were loud and reckless, but this… how are we supposed to fight this, Erron?" She crossed her arms over her chest and lowered her voice. "Is this what your life is like?" she asked him, "a constant war; a never-ending conflict?"

The cowboy tried to comfort her once more, but she moved away, eyes about to finally rain.

"Well, I don't want that for myself," she said. "I've been asking myself, for more than a decade now, is this…  _it_?  Is this life? All I have is dust and memories, and a spot in a cemetery back in my world, but this world? What does this world have to offer? Can you honestly tell me this will be over someday? Can you tell me we'll live normal lives, one day when this thing's finally over?"

The gunslinger lowered his head.

"Can you tell me there will come a day when we don't have to look over our shoulders? When we don't have to measure our words or count our foes?"

Black turned around and clapped his hands loudly, capturing the citizens’ attention.

"What are you doing, boy?" A concerned Yvo inquired but Black quickly dismissed him. Taking a step forward as quickly as possible, the doctor grabbed Black by the wrist and narrowed her eyes at him.

"You said it yourself," he told her, "this quiet kind of war they procured for us is forcing us to measure our words but this is our war too, and we won't be quiet about it; we won't measure our words – not anymore."

He took a step forward, addressing the people with a simple nod of his head. Monsters and wonders alike gathered around the man as he beckoned them to get closer with a solemn disposition. The message he was writing in his mind had a voice of its own; it was whimsical yet immensely purposeful, it was soft enough to say goodbye to a dear friend but also harsh enough to punish those who had dared to kill her.

"I want to thank you all for coming tonight," he stated, addressing everyone with nothing but the altruistic sincerity in his eyes. "Rosario was a pillar for most of us in this community and she will be missed. She was an old friend of mine," he paused for a brief moment, as a timid grin began to curl his lips upwards, "believe it or not, I  _do_  have friends. Not too many friends, but I do have some… a few, to be honest. That's why it hurts so much when they are suddenly taken away like this."

A wild, broken murmur traveled the streets as Black made a long pause in his speech; the effect that his words had imprinted on every soul was now revealing the truth that the people had not wanted to see: Rosario had been murdered, the woman they used to call their Queen had been assassinated and there were screams, and loud protests; fires in the night that knew no peace. Concerned, Yvo tried to reach out but Black didn't let him. He simply went on, witnessing the riot taking shape in front of his eyes.

"As the new manager of the House of Pleasure, I assure you: I won't rest until I find the ones that murdered Rosario. My voice and your voices, as they rage in fury, must reach the Palace: they know who they are, they know their names and where they live; they know the sort of things they do and they know how they do things." Enraptured by the communal spirit as it finally welcomed him as one of their own, Black stared into the doctor's eyes trying to find recognition; perhaps even the shadow of a shared emotion, but all he found was worry and sorrow. Disheartened by that powerful gaze of hers, he lowered his head, ashamed - he had undressed the sinners, but the martyr was still there, waiting for a friend.

"I recently got married to a wonderful woman," he said softly, as if only speaking to himself, "but before her, I had another wife and, just like Rosario, she too was taken away from me. If there's one thing I learned from her is that good people do exist." He looked over his shoulder and nodded softly at the old Edenian barrister: Zar had graced the old man with her friendship and, in return, he had accompanied her through her darkest hours. "The nature of my species is shady," Black said, "we always have a hard time communicating or trusting other people; we always think there's something wrong or fishy when someone's just being kind to us. We judge good intentions; we are constantly speculating “ _maybe they're being this nice to me because they want something in return”_ … Rosario and my late wife were the living testimony that sometimes people can be nice just because they want to be nice and not because they have a secret agenda."

He remembered prison, and Zar's impeccable disposition as he fooled her, lied to her and played a million different games with her heart. But no matter the heartache, she was always back. Every time he needed her; she was always there.

"Sadly, only when they're gone for good, we realize they were just good." He almost didn't notice the soft touch of the doctor's hand as her fingers laced around his. "One day we find ourselves alone, thinking about the goals they had in mind; the end of their deceitful plans… well, turns out there was no plan; they were just good people."

His honesty, wholly naked and dispossessed of his own miseries, was the conduit for the flame to finally ignite in the night as monsters and wonders came together one last time to pay their respects to the one that was no longer with them. As the fire illuminated their faces, Rosario's existence transcended the logical parameters of a memory. She was now a myth in the howling night. Blazing and alive in her original essence, unreachable and still, infinitely close.


	54. Not in Kansas Anymore

Arc VI

Chapter LIV

**Not in Kansas Anymore**

(Click your Heels, Dorothy)

* * *

 " _A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face."_

Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph and Other Stories

* * *

The doctor turned and tossed in bed for the millionth time that night, awakening the tired gunman as she kicked his legs involuntarily, and added yet another bruise to the colorful collection of marks scattered all over his body. The man frowned, still refusing to abandon the pillow yet certain that her restlessness rooted for some company. He upped his chin with the slightest motion and observed her for a while – the procession had been an emotional ride for them both but Alexandra had taken care of the preparations of pretty much everything regarding Rosario's memorial: the woman should have been exhausted, she should have closed her eyes and succumbed to slumber the second her back met the mattress. Yet here she was, barely aware of her surroundings, waging war against her own thoughts.

Begrudgingly, he rubbed the sleep off his eyes and left the bed holding back one too many insults. He made quick work on the stairs, barely noticing the strange stillness of the place that late at night. He moved fast past the bar and grabbed a bottle of wine then went back to their bedroom. The corridor held no secrets to him: from the cold floor beneath his feet to the desolated torches still illuminating many of the doors along the way. He stopped before reaching his own bedroom as his bare back was assaulted by the cold night breeze. Completely awaken by now, he closed the solitary window as goosebumps took possession of his forearms then turned around and continued his march. He almost felt insulted in his pride when he found that the doctor was peacefully asleep now, comfortably tugged in a bed that now seemed far from his reach so the man rested the bottle on the nightstand, shook his head in silent desperation, and lit a cigar before exiting the room once again. Back in the corridor, and with nothing else to do, the man became acquainted with the realities going on inside each bedroom: some girls weren't alone while some others had yet to return.

Only then her shadow appeared on the doorframe; her nightgown a mere excuse for the man to turn around and admire her geography with eyes that, for a moment, forgot about the cold, the annoyance and the tempest within.

"And now you're up," he whispered, almost disheartened. "I should have guessed."

The woman crossed her arms over her chest then tilted her head to the side.

"What are you talking about?"

Nearly dismayed by her apathy, the cowboy pressed his back against the window and exhaled loudly – if she was having trouble sleeping, he could surely think of a thing or two that might just help her find the slumber she needed.

"Don't even think about it," she said, as if able to read his mind. "I'm too tired to even try to come up with a decent excuse tonight," the doctor let out almost defeated by her own train of thought as she sat beside him and the man shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm startin' to believe we're never gonna…" he moved his neck around awkwardly, determined not to make eye contact, "have sex, you know?" He let those words out almost timidly as if the irony of having moved to a brothel was powerful enough to make him blush at the thought of a lifetime without sex and the woman tried her best to hold back the laughter, but she failed miserably. "What?" Black asked, looking nearly damaged by her reaction. "Can you honestly tell me we're gonna have sex, eventually?"

She laughed even harder.

"Is that what you want?" She asked after a while. "I mean, is that  _all_  you want?"

"I," his exaggerated gestures were definitely betraying him. "I… you, we are…"

"Would you believe me if I told you that the moment has passed?" She tried her best to sound convincing but the smile tugging at the corners of her lips gave her away and the man looked away, throwing his arms around only to end up covering his face with his hands.

"Hang in there, cowboy," she said, but the smile on his lips surprised her.

"I can't remember the last time I heard you laugh like that," he confessed, making his plan permeable to her senses. "It's okay to laugh; we deserve a break from time to time, you know? Although I could really use the information, woman; when are we gonna have sex, you're killing me here," he joked again, and as the woman rested her head on his shoulder her smile felt warm against his neck. "You could have put on some clothes, honey, that nightgown of yours is quite revealing by the way."

"February 30th," she laughed. "You better save the date."

"I won't be in town during that week, honey," the gunman played along. "Raincheck for, let's say, February 38th?"

"You got it," she intertwined her fingers with his but her voice trailed off, leaving only the sound of the wind outside to caress his ears with the distinctive quality of an impenetrable distance. "I fear for El-A," the doctor finally confessed after a while and this time, it was his turn to become completely stunned by the surprise.

"Why?" He demanded to know, nearly angered by the doctor's sudden change of heart.

"Think about it; she's mostly driven by her own ambitions," Alex said, "and I say  _mostly_  because I do believe that even if her boyfriend is a piece of shit, she truly is in love with him. But now that everybody knows about our new positions, she's got nothing to offer. To the eyes of the Syndicate, tonight you rendered her useless."

"All I know is that she's always been a pain in the ass," the gunslinger retorted. "I'm sorry, Alex, but she's not gonna get my sympathy now. I may be an old man but my memory's still intact."

The doctor looked away for a short moment, retrieving her hand.

"The last part of your speech was beautiful, Black," she whispered, "but I can't help thinking the first part was a taunting provocation and now we'll have hell to pay to compensate for every word you said tonight and if they managed to kill Rosario then El-A, or even me, we are nothing compared to what she was, to what she represented to the members of this community. We left her alone, Erron, unprotected," the doctor finally said, undressing her regrets. “Now that we're back your words could have offended both parties: the Syndicate  _and_  the Palace."

"They need to start doing something," he fought back, "they can't be that bland – especially now that Rosario's gone."

"Agreed," the doctor nodded, "but while you are the Syndicate's most powerful enemy, you have to admit that the emperor has not been bland to  _you_  either." She touched his hands, staring into his eyes. "I thought you would want to go back to the Palace someday. I thought you’d want to be an enforcer again."

The gunman lowered his head and sighed – it felt as if he had last protected Kotal a million years ago.

"I certainly never planned to become the manager of this place," he said softly, "but if I had to be honest, I never thought I'd get married again and here we are."

"Out of necessity," she reminded him.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Second time I do that… I must be a good Samaritan after all."

The doctor smiled and patted him lightly on the shoulder before getting up again.

"Somewhere in the road between this world and the heavens above an angel just died," she joked as she leaned down and offered the man a hand for him to get up. "We should go back to bed now, Erron; unless you want to kill any more divine creatures with those comments of yours."

"What?" He asked as he took her hand and got on his feet. "It's true."

"If you say so…"

As they walked the short distance separating them from their room, the doctor noticed a silhouette exiting El-a's bedroom. the woman stopped her march instinctively, but Black didn't notice.

"They were not supposed to bring in any customers tonight," she let out as she turned around and the mercenary finally looked her way, trying his best to find whoever had exited the room. "How am I supposed to rule this place when she doesn't listen to a word I say?"

Cautiously, Black moved past the doctor and brushed her shoulder with his nearest hand.

"And that's why she won't be getting my sympathy, dear," his voice was merely a whisper, but his feet were already empowered by renewed determination. "I'm gonna offer him a refund, this brat's gonna learn one way or another that she's not the one making the rules here." The doctor nodded in silence and followed Black downstairs, but the gunslinger had already stopped the visitor from leaving.

The look in his eyes was telling her that he had found way more than what he'd been looking for.

"Azul?" The doctor asked the second she saw El-A's boyfriend trying to leave the brothel, but Black had his arms at the sides of the young man's body, preventing him from leaving. "What are you doing here?" She asked but as her words exited her mouth Azul tried to fight his way out. He pushed the doctor out of his way and his hand formed a fist that almost connected with Black's stomach, but the former enforcer was fast, and he quickly dodged the blow.

Still, a tiny bottle fell from Azul's coat.

A tiny bottle. Brown. And empty.

Tightening his grip around Azul's collar, the mercenary began to understand what was going on: his wife was right; El-A was now a liability and, exactly like they had done to Rosario, a familiar face had been the chosen one to finish the job.

"Go help El-A!" A desperate Black yelled, and the doctor ran up the stairs already prepared for the worst. She got on her knees the second she saw El-A's lifeless body on the ground, helpless and broken by the one she had loved the most. As controversial as she had been, she now looked as fragile as a leaf carried by the wind, stripped of her ambitions and betrayed by those who had promised her the world.

Just a child, corroded by demons that weren't even hers, handed over like a piece of disposable flesh for the war to claim her whole.

As the doctor closed El-A's eyes, the image of Aalem crossed her mind and even if the girl had decided to play a completely different part in their story, her death still felt unnecessary and profusely rotten. Far from poetic; and miles away from the enchanting chains of a tragic love affair. When the woman stood up and looked over her shoulder the space around her seemed to stretch beyond the limits of her comprehension – so much death had occurred between those walls without a single drop of blood spilled to acknowledge the irretrievable loss of those who could have been friends, mentors, sisters…

Walking almost blindly amongst the shadows closing in on her, the doctor went back downstairs unable to offer any sort of explanation to the girls gathering around the scene. Her mind drifted helplessly to the man downstairs, the only barrier preventing Azul from reaching a distorted, ill-natured freedom.

"He killed her," she whispered, her lifeless tone making it clear that she couldn't stand the injustice for much longer. Black tightened his grip, almost asphyxiating the murderer but even if she felt like screaming, no words left her lips.

"We were right here," Black yelled, blinded by fury. "We were sitting by the fucking window and you were murdering her, you son of a bitch!" Deep within his rage, the pulsating truth shone underneath his clenched teeth: the time for messages had already passed them by. Brief and short-lived, like a sigh that reaches the outside way too soon, this act of rebellion was the definitive wakeup call in a race of subtleties and cryptic hints.

He punched the boy in the stomach and watched, almost satisfied, as blood poured from Azul's mouth. Then he tied his hands behind his back and forced him to sit down on the ground. By the time he looked over his shoulder the doctor and the girls were staring back at him. In their eyes, he could see the only thing they wanted: revenge. They knew who he was, knew what he was made of and the many secrets conveyed in the letters of his name: the chain of sins that had originated his very existence, the crooked beginning and the irrefutably twisted ending waiting up ahead.

Caressing the cold trigger of his peacemaker with his thumb, the gunman swallowed hard and turned around.

"Someone go and get the authorities," he ordered. "Tell them that the Syndicate has killed yet another innocent woman but also tell them that the murderer is right here," he got on one knee, spitting on the boy's torso, "tell 'em to come get him." As soon as he stood up, the doctor put her hands on his shoulder, eyeing him viciously.

"Finish him," she ordered, but Black took a step back and shook his head.

"I'd love to, honey," he smirked, "but I'm trying to prove a point here."

"If the authorities find out about this, they will surely see the connection, Erron: two people; dead, in a very short time, in the same place - we can't risk it." Alex pressed on, trying to convince him but the man dismissed her arguments with a quick wave of his hand.

"That's the point," he said. "I want the authorities to know that we _know_  these deaths are connected. I want them to know that we  _know_  we're under attack, and I want them to know we're not afraid to fight back."

"Yvo won't be able to protect us forever," the doctor whispered in the gunman's ear as she leaned in and planted a soft kiss on his cheek. "The second the Syndicate finds out that we  _know_  about the barrister's limitations, it's over," she walked past him and the man turned around and looked at the congregation of scared girls staring back at him – he felt tempted to ask one of them to join his wife on her way to the Barristers' Office but he understood that, given the state those girls were in, they wouldn't be able to help Alex.

He walked up to the bar and poured himself a glass of wine but those eyes deconstructing him were still waiting for an answer.

"Now what?" He heard one of the girls say.

"Now we wait."

The darkness of the night was not enough to envelop him completely. Those girls gathered around the stairs looked like statues reminding him of the fractured nature of the brothel – factions and alliances could come and go but in their eyes, he would always be an outlander; a foreign factor modifying their lives and walking recklessly across severed paths of mistrust, fear, and anguish.

He looked for comforting words to leave his throat but found none. He was not used to being the one placating dark emotions and his mind was drifting far from all those faces, waiting for the doctor to come back home safe. Perhaps he should have been the one walking down the streets this late at night. Or perhaps they should have delivered the boy to the authorities instead of making the barristers come to them. Such mistakes, he pondered, seemed enough to carve a pattern in this ungodly hour. These shortcomings could not be erased with a bullet; this intricate dance of misdeeds and failures could not be undone by the irreversible fate that waits inside the barrel of a gun.

Minutes seemed to turn to hours with untimely ease yet the monsters in his head were far from calling it a night. What if they were waiting? What if Azul wasn't alone? He stood up, left the empty glass on the counter and walked towards the door, debating whether to run to the Barrister's office and leave the girls alone or not yet the second he opened the door he saw the caravan already headed towards him: a multitude of barristers and garrison officers were escorting the doctor back to the brothel but with them, another man was desperately trying to catch up with the group.

As the multitude got closer, Black recognized the man's face: he was none other than Ala-M Eré, Azul's father, and the Syndicate's recruiter.

The doctor shrugged her shoulders as she approached Black.

"Someone at the Barrister's Office must have tipped him off," she said, "and now he's desperately trying to save his son. He says he's willing to take full responsibility for Azul's actions."

The old barrister appeared then, nearly out of breath.

"I'm afraid that's not possible," he managed to say as he made his way through the crowd. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Black, but my bones have seen greater days." He leaned on the door for support and Black rushed to his aid.

“Move aside, boy; chasing after such a young wife is, indeed, a taxing endeavor for old men like us," Yvo joked and the gunman merely grimaced at the thought of his own younger counterpart, the man he had seen back in Earthrealm, the one whose name was now irrevocably linked to Rosario's and El-A's murders. Once again, the old Edenian barrister was exceeding the limitations of a body that had endured more than enough and the doctor frowned in his direction but Yvo walked past her and, laboriously, sat down near the stairs, facing Azul.

"Your father says we cannot convict you because we don't know what happened," he explained. "According to Mrs. Black, you and the girl were alone in her bedroom so, no witnesses... I guess we'll have to trust your version of the story, young man."

"He killed her," Black sentenced gravelly, "then he tried to run away; innocent people don't try to run away, Yvo, and you know it."

The barrister shook his head pensively: Black was right, but his word alone was not enough.

"That doesn't prove anything," the father claimed as he fought his way inside the brothel.

"Innocent people don't run away" Black repeated furiously. "Take him away, Yvo."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," Yvo lamented. "He may be a suspect; he may be the _only_ suspect we have but it's your word against his, Erron. There's no evidence."

"Same MO," Black spat venomously, hushing his words as he shook his head.

"Excuse me?" The old Edenian barrister questioned as he struggled to get up.

"Same MO," Black repeated as he got closer and showed Yvo the tiny brown bottle. The barrister nodded his head pensively, joining the dots and trying to connect both crimes. "And since his father is so determined to take responsibility for the boy's acts, perhaps we should let him. This man is the Syndicate's recruiter after all; his hands are not so clean either. His brother is also part of the Syndicate, but unlike this man here, he sits at their table. He’s part of the inner circle, El Club de los Amantes."

Yvo's face paled under the dim light just as if Black had dared to call the devil by its name.

"You know they are untouchable, boy," the barrister hissed, "there's not a single piece of evidence to help us prove that group even exists."

"Oh, but they're real, and you know they're real, everybody knows," Black fought back. "Since Azul and his father are here, why don't we go look for the boy's uncle now? If he's the supplier and we can somehow manage to prove it, we can put them in jail right now, Yvo, we can begin our hunt - one by one."

"Don't we need a search warrant for that?" The doctor questioned as she moved closer to the angered cowboy, but the man turned around and crossed his arms over his chest.

"This ain't America, honey," he retorted, "this is Outworld, and as long as an Official Representative of the Palace suspects someone, they can search their house. And I believe our Edenian friend here has been given enough reasons to suspect these people," he stared at the barrister, his eyes begging for help. "Azul is just the beginning, Yvo. All you need to do is pull this thread a little and the entire thing will fall apart; all I'm asking for is a little courage."

Yvo stared at the gunman for a while as the spark of hesitation set in his eyes. He could understand Black's drive and motivation – taking down the Syndicate and avenging the deaths of those he had loved had become the man's number one priority but going after the leaders of El Club de los Amantes so blindly was a strategy that could backfire. And, underneath the intricate patterns of connections and leads, going in without Kotal's approval seemed a little too bold, to say the least. Yet the old man took a deep breath and exhaled loudly.

"You better be right about this, boy," he whispered, "otherwise… I guess I don't even want to know what could happen to all of us if you're wrong."

The Barrister walked slowly towards the door and nodded his head once, beckoning the handful of garrison officers to join him.

"Azul and his father will be escorted to the tribunal and Black will go with them, since he's the accuser. A judge will be assigned for the case and both suspects and Black will be expected to cooperate in this ongoing investigation. If you don't, you could be facing entirely different charges such as obstruction of justice or, in your case, boy, false testimony," Yvo sentenced. "I command the Garrison to search the home of the Eré family in the quest for evidence. It is my duty as an Official Barrister of the Palace to lead the squad since I myself will be the plaintiff. As for this place, the House of Pleasure shall remain closed until the case is solved. The victim's room shall remain sealed since it's now a crime scene."

The father, the son and the gunman were the first to depart as a couple of officers proceeded to confiscate El-A's belongings, trying to gather as much evidence as possible in order to build the case. But before the barrister could leave the brothel the doctor rushed her way towards the entrance.

"He said  _same MO_ ," she said. "Yvo, if poison becomes the Syndicate's new MO, I can try to synthesize an antidote, but I have to know the exact components."

"I'll make sure you get the official report, then," the barrister offered, "until then, I suggest you stay here and wait for Erron to return."

"I can't sit around and do nothing, Yvo," she begged. "I feel completely powerless; please give me the bottle."

Yvo froze in place, unsure if Black had come clean about the bottle's origins.

"Please," she insisted. "Let me help."


	55. The Road Not Taken

Arc VI

Chapter LV

**The Road Not Taken**

* * *

_"I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say."_

T.S. Eliot

* * *

He came back home during the brief moments between complete darkness and the first symptoms of sunlight. Rested his hat on his nightstand and sat on the bed before kicking off his boots and taking a deep breath. In the quiet hours of solitude and desperation, the brothel looked like a haunted house no-one cared to visit anymore; a forgotten symbol of festivity destined to remember the glory days that were long gone.

Barely washed in the weak light coming from the window, the mercenary watched as his wife left the small bathroom. But she stood right in place. His tired smile was not enough to bring her any closer.

"Both the uncle and the father are behind bars, they found enough poison in the house to kill the entire population of Outworld," he let out, a mixture of pride and exhaustion was dominating his diction. Yet the woman didn't move. "That's some big news, Alex, bright up a little, won't ya?"

Only then she moved. Languid footsteps dragged her closer to the bed but still, she seemed to be completely out of his reach somehow.

"I have some big news for you as well," she began, without making eye contact. "I think it was a message for us, Earthrealmers. The main ingredient of the poison they used to assassinate Rosario is hemlock; it's the same type of poison the Greeks used in order to kill Socrates. It's a long shot, I know, but this is a story that only us, Earthrealmers, know. I never knew violence could be this poetic, though,"

"Son of a bitch," he cursed through clenched teeth as his hands rolled into fists. "Edenians can't be trusted."

"Are you really gonna blame Yvo, Black?" the doctor asked. "After everything he's done for us, are you really going to be that man? Why didn't you tell me that Nathan's company is the one fabricating the poison? Were you ever gonna tell me?"

He raised both his hands in a defensive stance, but his mouth remained in silence.

"I can take it, Black," she said. "I can take it."

"First of all, we don't know if Nathan's been compromised," Black began, trying to sound as calm as humanly possible. "The bottles have his firm's label, but we don't know how those bottles ended up this side of the portal; maybe he's not involved. Maybe the bottles were stolen. From what you told me, there's no reason to believe he could have been compromised."

"I can take it," she repeated, moving closer to her husband and finally sitting down on the bed right next to him. "Whether he's been compromised or not, Erron, I can handle this pain." She cupped his hands with hers, soft digits drawing circles on his skin. "When Aalem died, you told me he was an Edenian; you said he was older than he looked but that wasn't true. Even if he wasn't as young as he looked, he was still a child and you didn't want me to witness something as devastating as a child's death. Your lie was only trying to protect me, you were only trying to lessen the pain," she stared into his eyes as her hands held onto him tighter than before: "This is exactly the same, Black. You were trying to lessen the pain but I'm not that frightened girl anymore. I appreciate what you tried to do for me, but I can take it."

He kissed her softly on the lips, still overwhelmed by her words.

"I need you to see me as a woman, Black," she whispered against his mouth, "not as a child. If we're going to fight this fight, you're gonna have to trust me on this."

"Will you ever look at me and see past the mercenary?" he asked, and she grinned softly at him.

"I know who you are," she said, "you're one of the very few, selected individuals in the whole universe that's entirely capable of making me feel loved. Just don't ruin it," the doctor smiled and patted his shoulder lightly. "Tell me what happened tonight, I don't want to go to sleep without knowing."

"Well, the Garrison found the rest of the poison hidden in the Eré house and many neighbors were out in the street, watching the whole thing, so I bet the rumors about the Syndicate getting weaker are already traveling fast all across the city," Black said. "Azul, his father, and his uncle, all of them are in jail now since the Officers connected the dots pretty quickly. The Syndicate has lost one of its biggest instigators tonight – and don't forget that one of them is also a member of El Club de los Amantes, so…"

"You did good tonight, Erron," the woman acknowledged, and the cowboy nodded his head, quietly accepting the compliment.

"So did you," he admitted as she rested her back on his torso, "discovering the components in the poison is just as big as imprisoning two key members of the Syndicate. Can you synthesize an antidote, then? Even if the Garrison confiscated the poison, we can't be sure those bottles are the Syndicate's entire supply."

"I guess I can try," she whispered, "now that the main component has been isolated, I can try to find an antidote, but hemlock is quite deadly, Erron, and this is Outworld – my medical inventory is rather poor."

"There's… there's just one thing, in the back of my mind," the man let out as he stretched his legs and put his arms around the doctor's stomach. "What you said about this message… I don't think the Syndicate would care for poetical vengeance."

"That's why I said it was a long shot," Alex offered simply. "Their strategies have always been pretty straightforward: they use poison and bombs; they steal and smuggle…"

"But what if that's what they want us to think?"

The doctor shifted inside his arms and eyed him speculatively.

"What if they want us to believe they would never do such an intricate thing?" Black asked. "After all, it's only natural for an Earthrealmer to think about Socrates the second they hear hemlock, right?"

She nodded her head once.

"But only an Earhrealmer could craft that sort of message," the doctor said.

"Etienne is an Eathrealmer," Black remembered. "He's the only Earthrealmer in El Club de los Amantes."

The doctor nodded once more, but her eyes were shrouded in doubt.

"Why would a pharmaceutical firm fabricate poison?" she asked, and his hands squeezed her shoulders with renewed care and affection.

"Alex, we have no reason to believe your ex-boyfriend could have been compromised," Black said. "Maybe they branched out, and now they produce different things? I don't know the different uses this poison can have… I hear most fertilizers are shit."

"Hemlock, Black."

As she rested her head in the soft spot between his head and his shoulder, the man exhaled loudly and closed his eyes. The auburn lights of a new day were already washing the city rooftops in the bright incandescence that precedes a sunny day.

* * *

When the sun reached its peak in the sky and the voices reached their peak on the ground, the mercenary opened his eyes and exhaled loudly the second he realized they had company. A bunch of girls had gathered around the bed, but the look in their eyes seemed far from curious.

"Boundaries, ladies," he mumbled as he rubbed the sleep off his eyes, "remind me to tell ya a few words on that later." Although his words were parsimoniously slow, his clumsy movements were enough to wake up his wife who, bewildered by the presence of an unexpected audience, opted to cover her face with her hands.

"I know the brothel is momentarily closed," Black went on as he finally abandoned the bed and got dressed, "I know there's not much for you ladies to do around here, but this is creepy as fuck."

"More than creepy," the doctor added, "this is unacceptable! Two people have died here, and you decide to come over to our bedroom and stare at us while we're asleep? What about our privacy? We could have been naked; we could have been… you know… we're a married couple."

Black rolled his eyes.

"Nah, married people don't it that often, or so I heard."

"Excuse us," one of the girls said, saving the cowboy from his wife's cold stare. "There's a visitor waiting for you downstairs."

"A visitor?" Black inquired. "I'm not expecting any visitors today. I had a terrible night, tell them to come back some other time."

He should have seen the shadow towering near the window. Should have heard the footsteps as they approached the door.

"Maybe you can do an exception, Erron," the Emperor said as he leaned his body on the doorframe, "for old times' sake."

For the first time in the history of Outworld, an Emperor had walked through the door and glanced at the lives of those who existed only in the confines of a land that stretched far beyond the castle walls and barricades. For the first time in the history of Outworld, an Emperor had chosen to visit the Oppressed ones.

Small, and secluded behind the Emperor's imponent shadow, Yvo stood solemnly. As Black froze in place, the Edenian barrister ordered the girls to leave the brothel and watched in silence as one by one they marched downstairs and out into the streets where the curious crowd had already begun to gather. But the real repercussions of Kotal's presence there; what it actually meant for the Emperor to be standing tall inside the House of Pleasure was irrevocably written all over the doctor's face.

"I'll give you a moment for you to get ready," Kotal said, "I'll be waiting downstairs."

Yvo followed his superior as fast as his damaged, old knees allowed the man to and the doctor got out of bed and put on the first dress that came into view as Black waited for her by the doorframe.

"Social visit?" The woman asked, measuring Black's reaction with a suspicious eyebrow, but the man shook his head and took her hand in his, guiding her downstairs and near the bar where the representatives of the Palace were waiting for them.

"Can I offer you a drink?" Black asked but both the Emperor and the barrister refused. The Osh-Tekk's eyes wandered the room with petulant apprehension until the sight of Alexandra softened the view with a sense of beauty that simply did not belong in such a place as The House of Pleasure.

"Congratulations on your marriage," the Emperor said as he offered his hand to Alexandra. "Why a beautiful woman like you would ever want to spend the rest of her life with a man like Erron is simply beyond me – but I wish the best for the both of you, from the bottom of my heart."

Taken aback by words she had never expected to hear from Kotal Kahn himself, the woman nodded her head in silent reverence and took a seat beside her husband.

"So, what brings you to The House of Pleasure, Emperor?" Black asked immediately, finishing what seemed to be a fabricated aura of pleasantries and comradery. "Last night we captured three members of the Syndicate, two of them are also active members of their inner circle, El Club de los Amantes and today you woke up and just decided it was time for a social visit?"

The Emperor laughed at the cowboy's words. If anything, he had missed Black's twisted sense of humor.

"I wanted to congratulate you in person," the highest authority of Outworld offered. "What you did last night deserves some recognition. Plus, I really wanted to meet your wife, Erron. When Yvo told me you had gotten married again I couldn't believe it but here you are – from prisoner in the maximum-security pavilion to officer in a Garrison, and from the Garrison to manager of this peculiar place, married to this exceptionally beautiful woman. Forgive my skepticism but I had to see it with my own eyes."

"Also, the boy talked earlier today," Yvo intervened as soon as he sensed the storm gathering inside the gunslinger. "Azul confirmed that it was El-A the one who killed Rosario. It's clear now that the Syndicate was not expecting this lady to return, least of all married to you, boy."

"And none of them could anticipate Rosario's last will and testament," the Emperor added, "their greed blinded them all: with you gone, the power they sook finally seemed within reach but the moment you returned, that poor girl became a liability."

"Well, it's nice to see the emperor so invested, for a change," Black sentenced coldly. "You were the one responsible for the creation of the Rebel-Seekers but when things got ugly, you simply turned the other cheek. The Syndicate is different – they don't starve, they have money and resources… I can understand your concern, Kotal."

With a somber grin, the Emperor of Outworld stared at Black, even when his words were aimed for someone else.

"Yvo, it's a lovely day outside," Kotal said. "Why don't you take this beautiful lady out for a walk?"

Yvo rose from his chair but the doctor did not; her hands landed on Black's but her husband's eyes were already begging her to leave the room. Nodding her head once as a sign of silent acceptance, the doctor finally joined the barrister, leaving the Emperor and his former enforcer alone for the first time in years.

"And they say I have a way with ladies…" Black's ironic sense of humor tried to mitigate the concern that was written all over Alexandra's face, but the Emperor remained silent until both the doctor and the barrister had left the building.

"Here is what you don't know, Black: Rosario came to see me some days before she died," Kotal began. "She told me she was going to give you this power, she said she was going to make you the manager of this place and I agreed, I thought it was a good idea: Rosario was a very wise woman, but she was also old and fragile. I could see in her eyes that she was afraid – she knew the Syndicate would try to take control over the brothel, so she chose to protect the heirs. When I offered her protection, she refused to accept it," the Emperor confessed. "She said your wife was the only one that needed protection, but she also said that as long as she was with you, she would be alright."

"Rosario was a survivor," Black remembered fondly. "But in the end, she chose to protect someone other than herself, that takes courage."

He had known that woman ever since she was a teenager striving for a better life. From protégé to Queen of the Oppressed, her life had been an accumulation of bitter fights against an invisible monster. But the tough lady he still remembered from those days of warm afternoons and sweaty bedsheets had vanished once the doctor entered the scene: Alexandra was the daughter Rosario had chosen not to have, a tough lady in her twenties, striving for a better life, a mother mourning the children she had chosen not to have.

Kotal nodded his head. Rosario had never been a true adversary to the crown. If anything, her mere figure was enough for the Palace to acknowledge that there were others out there, living far beyond the fortress of power and corruption.

"When she told me about her last will and testament, she didn't mention this marriage, though," the Emperor said. "If there's one thing I've always admired about Rosario was her ability to always keep an ace up her sleeve, no matter the circumstances… just like you, Erron. I assume that in order to validate her last will and testament she forced you two to get married, sounds like something she would have done," he smiled quietly, "but the sooner you cooperate with me, the sooner you can leave this whole thing behind, Erron: this filthy place, a fake marriage that is the equivalent to a business contract…"

She had resurrected the dead. She had uncovered his past. She had seen and analyzed and deconstructed every single one of his sins and she had stayed. A decade had gone by.

And still there she was. By his side.

"I love that woman."

He was honest. The feeling he had just exposed had little to do with the womanizer the Emperor remembered; it seemed genuine and sincere.

"In that case, Erron, do it for her," the Osh-Tekk said. "Your exaggerated longevity has provided you with a remarkable sense of patience. You think before you speak, you consider your chances before you decide to act. A man as cautious as you would never dare to act so boldly unless he has an ace up his sleeve," he crossed his arms over his chest, expecting a reaction, "Rosario has taught you well, Black: you always have an ace up your sleeve, no matter the circumstances."

"You want me to cooperate with you? You want me to work for you again?" The cowboy asked. "Seems convenient for you to make such an offer now – maybe you want to control this "power" Rosario has given me, Kotal. I know you; you are just like us: you too know how to save an ace up your sleeve."

"I know you're hiding something, Erron."

The gunslinger tried his best to masquerade his surprise but failed miserably. Of course he was hiding something: his wife was not the woman Kotal thought she was. The doctor hadn't died that night in the cabin, she had endured a decade on her own, refusing to join the census and concealing her true nature. They had both crossed the portal, and they had managed to cross it again and make it back home. An entire decade had gone by, but little had changed: she still was a prisoner of her own story.

"Something not even your wife knows you have in your possession," Kotal added, dissipating the panic written all over the gunslinger's face. "In fact, I wonder if she knows this item even exists… seems to me that both you and Rosario have been busy keeping things from her. I wonder how she will manage to rule this place when there's so much she doesn't know… Is keeping her in the dark the wisest way to protect her?"

Black's hands balled into tight fists, but he knew he was in no position to negotiate with Kotal.

"Rosario was afraid of the possibility that the two of you would never return," the Emperor said. "She feared that, by letting you go, you would be able to start anew in some other place, far from this war."

"Because then her last will and testament would become as useful as a broken toy gun."

"Precisely," Kotal nodded. "She told me there was a journal; her personal journal with enough names and information to take down the Syndicate and El Club de los Amantes but she didn't give me this journal – she kept it, as leverage. Give me the journal, Erron. Cooperate with me; we can take them down for good."

"And what do you think I've been trying to do all this time?" An enraged Black asked.

"You are but one man, Erron. I have an entire army," Kotal sentenced. "Give me Rosario's journal and allow me to finish this conflict. I can offer you more money than you can imagine – and you're going to need it: with the Syndicate gone, El Club de los Amantes will no longer fund the brothel."

"We'll manage," the cowboy fought back, resolute. "The Syndicate has always been the pebble in your shoe, Kotal. The connection is there, although I know you're never gonna come clean about this: your so-called benevolence has allowed both the Syndicate and the Black Dragon to move all sorts of items across the portals; your silent connivance has done that much for the realm you swore to protect and when things got out of hand, you used your own people and created the Rebel-Seekers initiative."

"You should know better than anyone, Erron," Kotal retorted. "You were once a member of the Black Dragon organization."

Kotal's calm demeanor let him know that he hadn't come to the brothel to simply ask for cooperation.

"You knew?"

The Emperor grinned softly at the confused cowboy.

"All this time," Kotal finally confessed. "Every time an Emperor rises or falls, the Black Dragon is involved one way or another – but you were the bridge connecting both sides: I was fighting for the throne from the resistance and your name kept getting bigger and bigger."

"Dexitis was the best political activist I ever met," Black remembered. "He helped me back then, when I tried to get close to you."

"A blacksmith, Erron," Kotal said. "He was a blacksmith. You may think he was a wonderful politician, but you were the one who did all the work – you never needed anyone to get what you want, why would you need a blacksmith? You were just trying to indulge your friend in his political fantasies, Erron; he had let you in and you had betrayed him, you slept with his wife, got her murdered and then you left because you couldn't bear to look inside the boy's eyes. That's what the Black Dragon truly offered you: a chance to walk away from all the shame and the disgrace you yourself had brought upon your own family." He paused and took a deep breath. "You may not know this, but I've been to Earthrealm a long time ago – I know more about you than you can possibly imagine."

For a brief moment, Black covered his face with his hands as a million questions inside his head struggled to reach the outside.

"Why did you let me become an enforcer when you knew, all this time, that I had been a member of the Black Dragon in the past?" He finally managed to ask his former employer.

"Because you picked a side, Erron," the Emperor said. "The right side – but even so, every once in a while the effects of your days with the Black Dragon show, and you become clumsy and reckless, like the time you decided to go against Kano all on your own, and you nearly ended up dead, remember?"

"How could I ever forget?" Black asked sarcastically. "I nearly died, but I also ended up spending a whole decade behind bars. I was only trying to eliminate someone whose sole purpose is to create chaos and instability, but you thought I was abusing my power."

"You went after Kano alone because you were hotheaded: you knew the man, you had worked with him in the past, you thought you could beat him. That's not the reason why I sent you to prison, Erron. If I had thought you were abusing your power, you would have been executed like the poor bastard that attacked you and your late wife. The people needed a resolution, the Rebel-Seekers needed you to disappear and I needed you to stop being so stubborn," Kotal confessed. "A decade behind bars is a reasonable amount of time for a man like you to think things through and gain a new, different perspective."

"Oh," the cowboy placed both his hands over his heart, "thank you."

"Any debts from the past I should know of, Erron?" Kotal asked, dismissing the irony that Black had thrown his way. "Once we take down the Syndicate, the Black Dragon is going to mourn a very precious ally – some sort of retribution is to be expected in the future, I'm afraid."

The gunslinger shook his head.

"No. I always pay my debts – and I pay them myself, I don't go around making other people pay for my shortcomings."

"I'm not so sure about that," the Emperor retorted.

"Come on, Kotal," the gunman smiled sardonically, "the attacks, the indiscriminate recruiting of young citizens, the piles of corpses spread all across the city? The Syndicate has crossed all lines here but someone in your position cannot finish them – you need someone to do the hard, dirty work, don't ya? You need someone to fight your battles, you need someone to point you in the "right direction" and, let's say, provide you with enough names and information to finally take down the Syndicate and El Club de los Amantes. You're in my territory now, Kotal – tread carefully."

"Your territory? The way I see things, you have yet to be accepted by these people… Don't just stand in the way of justice so casually, Erron. Do it for her," Kotal insisted. "I have come to admire this gentle touch of sentimentalism in you: you did it for your first wife, now you can do it for your second wife – provide her with a better life. She's the legal owner of this place but without the money that only the Syndicate can provide, she's going to be living in the streets in no time. Accept my offer, Erron: give me the journal and I'll fund the House of Pleasure for as long as you need." Noticing Black's dubitative expression, the Emperor pressed on: "I know you are loyal towards those you truly care about, Black. I know that, when you first arrived here, Dexitis' friends helped you infiltrate Shao Kahn's ranks. You pretended to work for Shao Kahn, you even romanced Skarlet to get exactly what you wanted from her. That first taste of power must have been delicious for someone like you; many people doubted you back then: we were fighting in the streets, getting our hands dirty, but all your battles were fought in the comfort of a bed. Your friendship with the blacksmith compelled you to do the right thing in the end – when you betrayed Tanya you chose to abandon Mileena and help the resistance. I know, Erron. I too keep several aces up my sleeve."

The gunslinger cleared his throat as he tried his best to summon the memories of a time that seemed alien and completely lost.

"If you become the primary funder of the brothel," Black said, "I need to know we'll still be in charge."

"You have my word," Kotal assured. "I won't interfere with your business."

Black lowered his head and went back upstairs. In a couple of minutes, he was back, carrying the precious journal in his hands. El Club de los Amantes was on borrowed time, and Kotal was about to take all credit for taking down the Syndicate. His power, stable and strong once again, had survived yet another war.

"Nobody can know I have this journal in my possession, Black – I need your discretion," Kotal required. "We'll act fast; they'll never see us coming."

"And then what?" The cowboy asked as he finally let go of Rosario's personal journal.

"Then this nightmare will be finally over."

* * *

In just a couple of days, his entire strategy had collapsed all around him. He wandered the deserted brothel looking for something to do but now, dispossessed of a clear goal, the cowboy's footsteps had become languid and lazy. For the first time in ages, he was finally free to sit back and relax but the fighter in him had completely forgotten how to do such things.

The news had traveled fast: the Emperor himself had been the leader of the army that had rallied the city and finally captured the members of El Club de los Amantes. The Syndicate was no more. The war was finally over.

He should have felt relieved. He should have finally allowed himself to breathe. But the aftertaste of their struggle was unexpectedly sour.

"Looking good, Black," Alexandra whispered in his ear as the man got ready for the big event of the evening. Public executions had never been something he enjoyed but the Royal invitation had his name on it, and Black knew he was in no position to refuse.

"Please, come with me," he begged, even when he already knew the answer.

The doctor shook her head and kissed him softly on his shoulder. As his hat rested on his hands, the man turned around and faced his wife.

"You don't look happy," she said.

"That's because I'm not. I feel empty-handed. Taking down the Syndicate was our plan and now somebody else's taking all the credit," he let out downheartedly. "Those people they killed, the ones we loved and lost – they were our friends, Alex. Avenging them was supposed to be our job, not a political strategy."

"Does it really matter who ended this war?" she asked. "Does it really matter who did what? We all did what we had to do, Erron. We lost many friends along the way, but I doubt they would have wanted us to spill more blood in their names."

He planted a soft kiss on her hand and tipped his hat at her.

"Maybe you're right," he whispered as a bittersweet grin took over his face. Then he went downstairs and exited the brothel, quickly joining the multitude of nameless faces walking down the streets.

Nothing like a public execution to catch everyone's attention. They were ending a war that had broken down the pillars of the city, burying friends and loved ones underneath concrete and stone. Their blood had dried on their hands; the yellow candles that had once burned in their honor were nothing but faded memories now.

Outworld worked that way, he remembered as he walked past the Palace gates and reentered a scenario he knew like the back of his own hand. Symbolisms of a retrograde kind of grandeur came to greet him with every step he took. Faces he hadn't seen in a very long time; smells he hadn't smelled in more than a decade. But now the familiarity of this environment seemed eerie and distant. Those voices clamoring for blood were but an echo carried by the wind. Their song and their message were there, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not decode their meaning.

They were exultant. Triumphant in their agony. The Coliseum had that kind of power over them. They weren't mad at the bunch of people that were about to be executed. They weren't angry. They did not feel the need to ask them why they had robbed them of the chance to spend their lives with the ones they loved.

They were victorious. They were insanely happy.

Yvo found him in the crowd, absorbed in the hurricane of conflicting emotions and nearly disarmed by the realization that all those people were actually celebrating death. The barrister called out his name and the cowboy followed him through the endless labyrinth of sweat and muscle that stretched endlessly before his eyes; up the stairs, past all guards and right into Kotal's balcony.

The Emperor had saved a seat just for him. At his right.

Just like old times.

One by one, the members of El Club de los Amantes entered the arena and the crowd went wild, throwing all sorts of objects at them, fervently waiting for their blood to kiss the ground. Their silhouettes stood still in the arena for everyone to finally take a look at their faces and learn the parts they had played in the war: Del' L Agua-Ribbay, the woman who had provided free shelter to the Rebel-Seekers when they needed a place to hide; Rhú Zed, the facilitator that had made an art out of establishing connections inside the Royal Palace and the members of the Eré family, who had been in charge of convincing young citizens to join their cause, training and fully indoctrinating them: Ala-m Eré, Sirg-kún Eré and Azul Eré,

"Etienne is missing," Black said as he finally sat down next to the Emperor, but the Osh-Tekk shrugged his shoulders.

"We couldn't find any information about him or his whereabouts in Rosario's journal, the man's a complete mystery," he said. "But people don't know that, Black. They didn't even know El Club existed until we destroyed it. This is our victory, Erron – yours and mine. It is okay for you to enjoy it. Besides, if this man is as clever as his friends say he is, he'll find his way back to Earthrealm."

"Where he'll find his Black Dragon associates, who will, by then, be seeking retribution." Black retorted.

"As I said, Black, some sort of retribution is to be expected."

"So much for closure," the cowboy offered. "It's just… I can't believe this is all over, I can't believe it was that simple: I give you a journal and suddenly all of our problems are gone…"

"Sometimes, Erron, you have to trust the system," Kotal said, proudly. "And, thanks to your enormous contribution, the system welcomes you back."

Heads rolled in the evening and blood painted the sand red. Euphoric throats roared under the dying sun for the entire universe to admire Outworld's thirst.

"What?"

The question burned in his mouth but there was no room for doubt in the hour of resolutions.

"When we captured these people, I changed my mind, Erron," Kotal said as he stood up and clapped his hands vehemently. "What you did for us was noble and disinterested – funding the brothel suddenly seemed cheap; you don't need my charity. Be one of my enforcers again, Erron, you earned it."

The cowboy stood up as well, but he didn't clap his hands. He didn't join the choir of happiness.

"You know we were counting on that money!" he yelled and his voice struggled, carried by a symphony of mad songs of blood and death.

"And you know that an enforcer's job comes with a rather generous paycheck."

"You asked me to do this for her," Black fought back. "Being an enforcer is a full-time job and you know it, Kotal. What do you expect me to do? Move back to the Palace and leave her alone in the brothel?"

"Bring her over," the Emperor suggested as he smiled and waved his hands at the people chanting his name. "She can move in with you; let some other girl run the place so you both can act as managers from here."

"That way you can make sure I don't rise as the new leader of the Oppressed; that way you can finally have all the power."

Kotal turned around and stared at Black with incredulous eyes.

"Power? This was never about power, Erron," he said. "I'm offering you the job you want; I'm offering you the chance to return to the Palace  _and_  manage the brothel, I'm even telling you to bring your wife with you, what more can you possibly want from me?"

"What I want, the only thing I truly need is for you to keep your promises." He sat back down, the only saddened soul in the entire Coliseum. "We can't just move to the Palace and direct things from there, Kotal. We can't leave all those girls alone, we can't do that. The House of Pleasure has always been a dumpster for people to come over and discard their "broken women" – we gotta change that, we gotta give them an actual chance in this life to be the ones they truly want to be… and we won't be able to do that from the comfortable bedrooms you have here."

The Emperor turned his back on him but, still, his voice resounded all over him.

"Whores will be whores, Erron," he said, "I'm afraid there's not much you can do to change that fact."

"In my time, the girls that worked at the saloon were not whores. They were singers, and waitresses, they were entertainers," he paused as the memory of his own mother visited his tormented mind. "And they were mothers, and sisters, and girlfriends, and daughters. They weren't broken figurines for men to toy with."

"This is not your time, Erron," Kotal sentenced, finally turning around and facing the cowboy, "that brothel is not your saloon; memories are memories, Black. The past will always be the past."

As the crowd shared songs of victory in the name of their Emperor, the lonely gunslinger stood up, tipped his hat at Kotal, and abandoned the balcony. Still, immersed in the powerful might of a joyful multitude, the old Edenian barrister witnessed the departure of a man that had had the entire world in his hand and had refused to accept it.

The barrister lowered his head, disheartened but certain: both Earthrealm and Outworld had destroyed and rejected that man so many times in the past that now neither Earthrealm nor Outworld truly deserved to be held by his hands.

* * *

The empty brothel welcomed his tired bones as he closed the door and went back upstairs. His life, ever since moving to the House of Pleasure had become a never-ending concatenation of stressful hours, leaving no room for neither night nor day to exist on their own. The doctor was waiting for him in the bedroom, alone and just as tired as he was.

"I gave the girls the night off," she whispered as he stepped inside, "I bet some of them are still in the Coliseum celebrating the end of a war they didn't even know was taking place around them."

He nodded his head once in silence. As a matter of fact, he had crossed paths with at least a dozen girls as he left the Coliseum. He took off his hat and sat down on the bed.

"So, how did it go?"

Biting his lower lip, the man shook his head.

"There's no money," his voice was a mere whisper, "he says I don't need his charity." He took a long breath and lowered his head. "He played me, Alex - he wants to have it all."

The woman approached him and kneeled on the floor before him, between his legs.

"He is an Emperor, Erron," she whispered back, placing her hands on his cheeks. "Of course he wants to have it all." She rose from her place and grabbed his hat – this broken man had little to do with the fearsome mercenary she had met oh so many years ago. "We'll do," she assured him, sitting down right next to him and gently patting his knee. "We'll manage like we always do, you'll see."

When the doctor rested her head on the soft spot between his neck and his shoulder, the man finally opened up.

"He offered me my old job as an enforcer," he said.

"So… back to square one?"

Her words made him smile, although his eyes remained vacant.

"He said you can move in with me, can you imagine that? Both of us, living at the Palace?" he tried to joke, but his sense of humor was clearly extinguished. "I said no."

She tilted her head to the side, unsure of the words she had just heard.

"I have always thought you'd want to go back to the Palace someday," she said and the man shrugged his shoulders innocently at her: if he had to be honest with himself, he hadn't thought about going back to the Palace in a very long time now.

"He wants us to direct the brothel from the Palace, and let one of the girls run the place – how are we supposed to do that?" He stared right into her eyes. "How can we live a life of opulence while the girls struggle? The girls and us, all of us, we've endured for so long, we've been through so much we can't just leave them – and you," he grabbed her by the shoulders, bringing her closer to him. "I know what the Palace does to people, I can talk from experience: that place corrupts people…"

He had transfixed the face of the man she had loved back then; in a life she could no longer call her own. He had overlapped his seasoned features countless times for her not to feel so all alone. He had fooled both time and distance. He had endured her most personal battles. More than a decade had gone by and still, he had waited.

He had found her.

"I love you."

Her words, simple but immensely eloquent, rendered him speechless.

"This is it," she said, "this man, right here, this is the man I love."

With infinite patience, the woman removed his leather jacket and unbuttoned his shirt as she sat on his lap and trapped his lower lip between her teeth. He was tired and exhausted and would have given everything he had for a decent amount of sleeping hours, but his skin reacted to her touch, slowly at first, gaining symptoms of desperation as moments went by. How long her mouth stayed on his mouth became a notion placed way beyond him.

"I would say it back, you know?" he managed to say, fighting for air, "but you once told me it's not my style."

Her smile collided against his face, but he didn't mind. Then her lips explored his neck and his shoulders, then his torso and his stomach; he laid on his back and closed his eyes for a moment, welcoming a sense of intimacy that was finally theirs and theirs alone. No ghosts were allowed on that bed. No tales from the past. No broken memories could find them now.

When she took off her dress, he admired a body that, just like his, had been punished by life and violence but, for the first time, all those symptoms of injustice looked like distant markers of the ones they had once been. None of those marks were enough to define them now. Her broken nipple, the brand on his shoulder, the number tattooed on her ankle, every single one of the tally marks on his forearms – they were but decoys in a path they both had been forced to walk, but none of those things were enough to define who they were, or what they meant to each other.

With one of his arms around her waist and his tongue dancing around her nipples, the man removed her underwear as clumsily as an inexperienced teenager, but the woman smiled and removed her hair from his face, her hands finally reaching for his jeans. They were in a hurry, even when they had the entire night ahead of them. They were desperate and urgent, even when they had the place all to themselves. The doctor and the enforcer. The fugitive and the mercenary. The cowboy and the whore. The owner and the manager. Their dichotomies exploded like a supernova – white, and bright; nearly blinding.

Their clothes on the floor and the sticky mess of sweaty skin were milestones in a night that felt like a thousand nights. Their hands explored, and touched, and roamed, and squeezed and pinched and brushed as their mouths licked and tasted and savored and devoured and sucked. They could not afford to stop now; there was not a single moment to be wasted: they were learning, their senses were learning. Every reaction, every movement, every nearly imperceptible change needed to be admired and treasured; every gesture was measured with almost mathematical precision – the whore that had slept with a thousand men and the cowboy that had lived for a thousand years had finally merged inside a single spark.

But his love was not historical.

And her passion was not professional.


	56. Tinker, Tailor

Interlude

Chapter LVI

**Tinker, Tailor…**

**(Tangible Ghosts)**

* * *

_“In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.”_

Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

* * *

“This might sound odd but… the other day, when I visited you, how did you see me?”

It had taken more than simply courage to knock on that door. It had taken the certainty of knowing that he wasn’t losing his mind. He had seen his missing girlfriend with another man at the cemetery, another man that looked exactly like him. But no-one believed him.

They said the grief he was experiencing after his father’s death was taking its toll on him. That his mind was playing all sorts of tricks on him, materializing images that only exist in the immaterial vacuum of his soul.

But he wasn’t entirely alone in this universe of transfixed faces and long-gone yesteryears. Lily had seen the man too. His replica had paid her a visit. And it was finally time to face the nameless spirit that had, undoubtedly, taken his place.

Lily cocked her head a little, taken aback by the question and by the visible differences between this Nathan and the one that had visited her a few weeks ago. She cleared her throat before speaking, choosing her words with impeccable care – she could make a list of the physical discrepancies between them: the hair, the clothes, the scars; but that seemed obvious and shallow somehow.

“I’m asking because I’m taking some pills, prescribed by my therapist,” Nathan lied, “so if I was rude to you, or acted weird during my visit, I apologize.” He wasn’t simply trying to help the girl, he was on a reconnaissance mission: he didn’t need Lily to tell him about the differences between him and that mysterious man – the only thing he needed was for her to confirm that the man in question had, indeed, visited her. “Ever since my father passed away, I’ve been thinking a lot about Alex and he advised me not to come but… I guess I let my emotions get the best of me.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Lily stopped him. “You don’t have to apologize. It was weird to see you; I mean, I wasn’t expecting you – but it was a nice surprise. If anything, I’m the one who should be apologizing – you seemed shocked, in distress, and I asked you all those questions: if you still consider yourself a part of this family, and why you didn’t show up when her parents died… I should have been more sensitive, you know? The fact that you’ve moved on with your life doesn’t mean you actually…”

“Moved on?” He asked.

“Well, that doesn’t make quite a lot of sense: the fact that you have “moved on” doesn’t necessarily mean that you _moved on_ ,” Lily said as she smiled and the man grimaced, trapped inside his own contradictory redundancy. “When the police stopped searching for her, they kind of made you move on, but even if you met somebody else, even if you managed to start your own family… you’re still waiting for her to come home, right?”

He nodded.

“Me too.”

Why was he still there? He had already obtained what he was looking for: this other man, this other version of himself had visited Lily. And they had talked about the past; he had faced those questions that still burned in the back of her throat. Did he still feel like a part of Alexandra’s family? Why hadn’t he showed up when her parents passed away?

He searched within him for answers that were far beyond the limits of his emotional education. For once, he was glad somebody else had been put to the test. That other man, the one he wished he could be, the one who had taken his place, had been the only one left to face a past that still refused to perish and die.

Maybe that’s why they had visited the cemetery that afternoon.

Maybe Lily’s questions had opened a rift within them that day.

For them, the tangible ghosts, know that there’s no such thing as the present. They exist only in the confines of time; they are nothing but a seemingly endless concatenation of moments long extinguished.

He stood up and walked to the door, knowing in his heart that he would never see that girl again. She had already given him the only thing he wanted. From that moment on, all that was left for her to offer were memories and the inevitable pain that came with them.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he whispered as his hand caressed the doorknob. Outside, the familiar streets stretched before his eyes like milestones of a lifetime he had tried to erase from his heart. Still, every house and every tree remembered him and his name; every car and every face in that neighborhood wanted to be more than symptoms of his past. He went back to the cemetery, retracing the path that the other Nathan had walked down that afternoon, trying his best to capture the essence of that casual meeting, trying his best to reenact the moment.

But they weren’t there. _She_ wasn’t there.

Lily had a house and the other Nathan had the heart of the woman he still loved.

But he had nothing.

He had memories and questions, tangible ghosts that refused to be chased, and an empty grave.

As he sat on the ground, in front of her name, his mind began to wonder if, maybe, he should have told Lily that the man who had knocked on her door was not the one she thought he was. There was a thirst for knowledge in his heart that was impossible to quench. He wanted to learn all about this other man – what Alexandra had seen in him, what she had found in him, who was that man, why was he so comfortable inside another man’s identity. Lily’s description was as accurate as it was cruel: the man who had visited her and the man he himself had seen in the cemetery were the same individual. A person defined by her love. Tailored by the mechanics of a lifetime that should have been his and his alone.

The road back home held no distractions. The rift between him and that man had nothing left to offer. He turned and tossed in bed, nearly breathless by the memories. His wife woke up, startled by him, but the second her fingers touched his forehead he moved away from her, suffocated by her concern. Then he left their room and moved in the dark.

He sat by himself on the front porch. He wasn’t losing his mind; the scene he had witnessed that day in the cemetery was etched inside his memory. Yet something was wrong. Something didn’t add up. The therapist was right: there was nothing real about ghosts. Yet he had seen himself in the eyes of another man. Another man that looked exactly like him.

_Your eyes gave you away._

Lily had seen him too. His own son had seen him too.

Inside the parallel, she still existed. And she was fresh as a newborn, certain as the brand-new day that follows the night.

He grabbed his phone, and his fingers searched through his contacts with an unfamiliar sense of resolution.

“You won’t believe who I saw the other day,” Nathan said.

“Who?”

“The woman you were supposed to search.”

He took a deep breath, not sure if this was the right thing to do. That man had corrupted his quest. That man had turned his life into a labyrinth.  

Minutes of complete silence piled up upon his shoulders. Kano was a ruthless bastard; he was never going to help him. As the years irreversibly progressed, Alex became a poor excuse for both men to stay in touch. Nathan was trapped in a web of lies and corruption and Kano was getting richer and more powerful than ever thanks to him.

The mercenary remembered her. One of Rosario’s girls, working at the House of Pleasure. He hadn’t crossed the portal in a very long time now, but he was positive of something: for a woman, there was no way out of the House of Pleasure. There were windows and corridors, beds and mirrors – but there were no exits.

“Have you been drinking, mate?” Kano asked, trying to buy himself some time. Nathan had never visited Outworld so whatever he had seen, _whoever_ he had seen, it could not be her. She was the queen in a long game of chess they had been playing for over a decade now. He had been saving her, cheating, with the despicable tone that encompasses a master strategy that requires calm and patience but now, it was simply not the time to reveal his tactics. The Syndicate had been brought to its knees, El Club de los Amantes was no more and the Black Dragon was suffering the consequences of Kotal Kahn’s rule.

Etienne had made it out alive just in time, but his recovery would take time. In the meantime, it was imperative to find a new structure that could potentially serve their cause.

Nathan was still of use, and he would be of use in the future too, once the Syndicate was properly re-established - but now, Kano didn’t have time for romantic obsessions.

“I need you to find somebody else,” Nathan said.

“You sure? Cos I kinda failed the first time.”

Kano had the resources. He too knew all too well that there’s nothing real about ghosts.

“I need you to find a man that looks exactly like me.”

There was a short pause. A small window of silence that stretched over the phone and across the distance. He hadn’t seen Nathan in a very long time, but those features were more than simply familiar: his face reminded him of a time long gone, of betrayal and salt.

Tobacco, booze, and gunpowder.

He ended the conversation with nothing but unintelligible grumblings and searched through his things for the old photograph that a desperate, young Nathan had given him, all those years ago. Then he went upstairs and sat on Etienne’s bed.

“You spent a lot of your time doing business for El Club in the House of Pleasure, right?” he asked. “Do you recognize her?”

Etienne looked at the photograph and furrowed his brow.

“That’s the new owner; Erron Black’s wife,” he said. “What about her? Do you know her?”

Kano shook his head dismissingly and smiled.

The world seemed as big as a chessboard. And the pieces, finally, were all falling into place.


	57. Booze, gunpowder and tobacco.

Arc VII

Chapter 57

**Booze, gunpowder and tobacco.**

* * *

_“You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.”_

Haruki Murakami - 1Q84

* * *

 

“Can you sing?”

“No,” she shakes her head and her smile gives her away.

“Well, perhaps you can dance.”

“Nope.”

Now it’s his turn to smile and it shows. It’s been three years of this life, the longest he’s spent his days with someone else, the longest he has let someone in.

“Alright, but you must have a talent,” he retorts as his forearms land on the bar. “Some kind of talent… Everybody has a special talent,” he insists. “Can you pour me a drink? Listen to me while I talk to you? Cause people here want someone they can talk to, so can I talk to you?”

He can. He knows he can.

She slides her hand across the bar and her fingers play with his hair. It’s been three years; he’s now one hundred and… who cares? He’s older than time and it feels like it’s always been that way. Ageless and hers. Timeless and no longer private. And she’s forty… something now; he’s not really sure. He knows when her birthday is, they have celebrated it for three years now, but he’s always suspected something.

He has a theory.

He believes that days are shorter in Outworld. Shorter than the days in Earthrealm. And if he’s right about this, that means she’s younger than what he believes. Not much younger, though, but a bit younger.

A bit younger is enough.

It gives him hope.

She says he’s a wrinkle in history. Something so old that just… he tends to forget what she says sometimes, his memory is not as good as it was before. In his defense, he’ll say that she always changes the end of the sentence, so maybe it’s not really his fault if he can’t keep up with all her insults – especially when she gets creative.

And she gets creative quite frequently.

And he laughs and says: “Hey, I might be older than time but at least I’m not gonna grow old and die.”

Then they both laugh.

It’s terrifying.

What? You don’t think he’s funny? Don’t worry, he’s been called worse. There was a time when they didn’t think that line was funny either. Then they changed their minds. But is it truly funny? Or is it cruel? Or belligerent? Or, let’s say, lovely?

They don’t know anymore so it’s settled: it is what it is.

* * *

He hasn’t seen that face in a very long time. The red beam contaminates the room and he can’t see past the mercenary and his goons. Or perhaps the crimson distraction is just that, a distraction. Perhaps his eyes are fine. Perhaps he can’t see past the mercenary because there’s nothing else to be seen.

He never delivered. He never helped him. he just used him, time and time again.

Desperation can be more dangerous than a weapon.

Kano never helped him find his missing girlfriend. Then he failed, again, when he turned the other cheek and denied him of the chance of confronting the ghost that haunted his every dream – the same face, the same eyes he sees every time he looks in the mirror.

“What do you want now?”

He’s got nothing left to offer and he knows he should have not come. But there’s one thing Kano never managed to take away from him: the last bastion of his hope. That’s why, every time that man would call him, he would always pick up the phone.

“Our leader has fully recovered,” Kano begins, “it’s been three years, we thought he’d never walk again but the son of a bitch is stronger than we thought.”

“Your leader?” Nathan asks. “You don’t strike me as a follower.”

He isn’t.

“The thing is, during these years, we’ve been working hard. We’ve recruited new members, we’ve indoctrinated them… but the Syndicate is weak. It can’t rise without substantial support from our loyal sponsors.”

A sponsor. That’s what he was.

“I’m out,” Nathan says as he stands up. “Unlike the last time we had this conversation, you got nothing to offer. You never found her, guess you never even looked for her. Why should I be your pawn again now?”

The tense silence in the room cannot seem to mirror the smile that suddenly takes over the mercenary’s face.

“Oh, but I did find her,” he says, “did I forget to tell you?”

His heart is a drum, but the rhythm is clumsy. The heat, the questions, the agonizing happiness are all beats he’s not used to. His composure flies out the window and his coherence goes next. What? When? Where? How? He becomes the list of questions that cannot trespass his own mouth. Turns out Kano has something to offer after all.

“Tell me what you need,” he pleads, “I can get an airplane from my company, or a car, or a boat, we’ll be on our way in no time.”

Kano shakes his head.

“No airplane. No car. No boat.” The smile is still there. “We leave tonight.”

“Tonight?” Nathan asks. “When will we be back? Can I at least call home and tell my wife that I gotta go on this unexpected business trip? Can I say goodbye to my kids?”

“Whatever,” Kano whispers as he shakes his head in quiet desperation.

“How long ago did you find her?”

The mercenary doesn’t answer his question and the man explodes, suspecting that he’s been lied to and manipulated for years. All the time they lost, the years that are gone, the dreams they had to bury.

Kano walks up to him and his hands land on Nathan’s shoulders.

“Now, for this ride, you need a ticket, pal,” he says.

“A ticket?”

Kano nods.

“A ten million dollars check.”

He knows that kind of money will undoubtedly jeopardize the future of his company. He knows he won’t be able to justify this transaction. But his signature kisses the paper and his shaky hand salutes the devil once again. The ultimate price has been paid, and now he’s got a ticket to ride. No airplane, no car, no boat. The light surrounds him and swallows him whole. It’s warm, but not entirely welcoming. Uncertain, but not entirely final.

* * *

He likes to play bartender from time to time; he thinks that’s what happens when you get used to living a more or less normal life. But the world is upside down, and this side of the portal the docile lights of mundanity could be enough to make a priest blush. This side of the portal, a doctor recounts her days as a prostitute and a mercenary ends up being the most honest man around.

But when the lights go off and the last patron leaves, the night offers some comfort for those whose meridians don’t seem to match the typical geometry of life.

A soft caress of warm air brushes her sex and she knows, for she has felt it before, and the motion follows without warning. The tip of his tongue draws a long curl upward and then it plummets down her heat. But then, it goes up again, a little curl and down again. And again – it goes up again, another little curl and then it goes down again.

Almost there.

A full circle is next, and then his tongue dances horizontally – just once. Then up again and down again and up again and down again. The woman drowns in her pleasure, but she can’t hold back the smile. She has felt it before. She has spelled it out before. Then she grabs him by the hair and forces his head up until their eyes meet:

“Did you just write your name on me?” she asks, and the mercenary looks proud of his creation. “With your tongue?”

He can be so sheepishly naïve sometimes that it’s hard to believe his childhood took place eons ago. Can he still remember his days as a little boy? How can he even manage to understand a place like Outworld in a mind so ancient?

He’s adaptable, she remembers. Still, it feels far from being enough to understand that the boy that existed oh so long ago and the man who embraced his own infinity in the shape of a world that’s not even his can be the same person.

As her mouth lands on his mouth, the woman wonders: how many mouths have been there before hers? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?

He’s an avantgarde retrograde - both primitive and postmodern. He is the little boy who grew up in rural Texas and he is the eccentric cowboy that exists in a land where cowboys were never a thing.

A fine, rich – but at the same time misplaced – oddity.

She sits on his lap and admires the mystery of his skin, her scientific curiosity is mesmerized by his skin – old and new at the same time, eternal and evergreen, yet destined to disappear someday. His skin contains traces of those who are long gone, but it seems incapacitated to contain those whose existences are confined to the distant future. And she sighs in the dark and tries to tell memories from ghosts – for him, with him, in spite of him. Oh, you conundrum of ancient knowledge, you university, you endless pool of accumulated wisdom.

The years he has lived, the number of days he has lived… the numbers are obscene and disheartening, how can she think of him as her love when she’s only going to exist for a fraction of his time? Then the concept of irony reappears briefly, as the woman rides the cowboy – is it possible to feel that old, original pain? The first-time pain. _How long has it been since you’ve been with an Earthrealmer? Does it feel the same with an Outworlder?_ She can explain with medical precision every single thing that’s bound to happen during the act – but she never does. His years of experience always cloud her judgment: he’s like an encyclopedia.

She laughs.

The whore becomes a virgin when she’s touched by his eternal fingers.

Underneath humid moans, they still remind each other of a time long gone.  

* * *

“Where are we?” Nathan asked as Kano guided him through the nightly landscape of the Kuatan Jungle. “What is this place? Is she really here, or is this yet another one of your tricks?”

The mercenary stops and wonders, for a moment, if he should feel offended by the accusation. But then he resumes his march.

“Yeah, she is.”

“Then let’s go get her.”

Another pause in the ride indicates the younger man that the mercenary is reaching the limits of his diminished patience.

“It’s not that simple,” Kano whispers in the dark. Far, beyond the green canopy, the yellowish lights of the city seem fatuous and melancholic.

“How did she manage to get here?”

Nathan’s voice is an echo in the hot wind. The smell in the air is but a mirage for his senses: booze, gunpowder and tobacco… he should have finished the cowboy when he had the chance, all those years ago, in this very same jungle.

“And how the fuck am I supposed to know that?”

* * *

Without the Syndicate, money’s tight, but they manage. There’s no use holding on to the past if you’re not going to honor it. So they honor it. The House of Pleasure and The Wise Bird merged into a single sanctuary for lost souls and so The Wise House was created. No longer a dumpster for broken women that people feel free to discard at the margins of society, now the girls wait tables, sing, dance and pour drinks. No one is forced to bed anyone to reach a monthly quota, and even if they know that prostitution is not completely off the table, at least they find comfort in knowing that each one of the girls is finally free to choose how they want to spend their days and with whom.

“It really is a shame that there are no pictures of Rosario,” the doctor whispers as her head rests on Black’s chest. “I think she would have liked this, I think she would have liked The Wise House.”

A soft grunt escapes Black’s throat and reaches the atmosphere.

“What was the deal between the two of you?” the doctor asked. “Even if I was the one who spent years under her wing, I still feel like you knew her better than I ever did.”

She’s right.

“She was gorgeous when we first met,” he remembers, “it’s still hard to believe she’s gone…”

Sometimes his words remind her of the fact that time for that man does not represent the same thing it does for nearly everyone else. Sometimes the topic fades away, but they both know all solutions are only temporary. The topic will always resurface. It will always return.

“I used to be a regular client when I first came to Outworld, she was one of my favorites,” he confessed. “She was the old owner’s protégé, and when that woman died, Rosario took over. I remained her only client – her personal client. I have always told myself that Zar had been the reason why I stopped coming, but time proved me wrong. I stopped coming because Rosario had aged, and the image of an old lover was sad and depressing. She was able to do what I could not – I was growing older too, but it was impossible for people to notice because my body remained young.”

A short pause helped her digest his words. But the true tenor of his confession still lingered there, all over her. Nobody can dance the rhythm he suggests, but it’s not because his rhythm is frantic – it’s because his body is completely rhythmless. No-one can stand still for that long, but he can.

He does.

* * *

“What are we waiting for?” Nathan demanded, unable to fall asleep in such a horrific place. “Why can’t you just tell me where she is so I can go to her?”

“Because you would ruin everything,” Kano retorted. “Have you considered what are you going to tell the woman you sleep with every night when you get home with your old girlfriend?”

Nathan shook his head. The commotion had taken his senses by surprise and now, at the gates of resolution, his confusion seemed greater than ever before.

“Then excuse me if I don’t think you’ll be able to keep your cool the second you see the woman you’ve been searching for almost half your life, mate,” the mercenary stated coldly. “We’ll have to be patient and draw them out.”

“Them?”

“Oh, did I forgot to mention? Your girlfriend’s married to another man, but I guess that makes it even between the two of you, right? It must be nice to know that she wasn’t alone during all those years without you, some people call it poetic justice…” the words were an unpleasant surprise for Nathan. “What? Don’t tell me you thought you were the only one that had the right to move on?”

He never moved on. And Kano knows this.

“Hang in there, Romeo. Luckily for us, one of our most valuable associates must be reaching the Palace as we speak,” the mercenary laughed. “You won’t have to wait that long.”

* * *

“How old were you when you stopped aging?”

He doesn’t remember the exact number. He guesses thirty-something and tosses the idea in the air, for her to play with it.

“Sometimes I wish I could take a sample of your blood and have it analyzed; you know? Then I look at your teeth, your gums… I try to keep up with the math, but I always fail. My mind is far too pragmatic to believe in magic – but here you are, and here I am, trying to deduce the biology of this trick of yours.”

She sits on the bed, plays with her hair. Then her eyes meet his again, and she looks far from satisfied.

“Considering the gap of time between your current age and your age back then, when you stopped aging, I believe that you must age one year every X amount of years. But I can’t remove the X from my equation, you don’t look older than a forty-year-old man so how big is the interval between stages of your aging? I can’t seem to figure it out.”

He stares at her; his expression is a perfect mix of tenderness and concern.

Her mathematical precision is accurate. He’s a museum of loss and pain.

“How many times have you been with an outworlder?” she asks and it takes the man some time to come up with an answer.

“Twice, maybe three times tops.”

“Oh, you’re a sexaholic…” She knows he’s lying. But it’s a kind of lie she can live with.

“Do you know how many pairs of breasts I’ve seen up until now?” the woman shakes her head. “Neither do I,” he smiles, “I must have lost count during the seventies – that was a busy decade.”

He’s well adjusted. Adapted. He has naturalized time in every single place he’s ever inhabited.

He’s seen the machinery of time working its magic, and has lived to tell the story.

“I can see why you like this place so much, it has kind of a western vibe after all,” she admits.

“Minus the syphilis.”

Her laughter is music to his ears.

“I wouldn’t be so sure. There must be a local equivalent to syphilis,” she tucks her hair behind her ear like a small child and smiles at him: “Syphilis…  such a beautiful word. An ugly thing, but a beautiful word…”

“Gonorrhea is, too,” he lives in these moments of complete innocence. “And chlamydia. All nasty things, but beautiful words nonetheless.”

Every once in a while she forgets that he cannot age. Her perception becomes ambivalent, fluctuating between oblivion and memory. Then she breathes again, and she realizes that the woman who’s going to love him more than she does hasn’t been born yet.

But then she remembers.

He can indulge himself in the wait.

He is an endless in-between.

That woman hasn’t been born yet, but he can wait for her.   
  
Then he holds her in his arms and the uncertainty of the future fades from her eyes. And she falls asleep in his chest, cocooned in the depths of his elongated fate.


	58. The Woman in the Mountain

Arc VII

Chapter 58

**The Woman in the Mountain**

* * *

_“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning."_

Haruki Murakami - 1Q84

* * *

The brand-new day had barely arrived when the Palace Barrister interrupted their slumber. The very first symptoms of a sunny morning were already dancing through the thin curtains. Yvo had become a regular patron of The Wise House, but his interest was placed far beyond the music and the drinks – his monthly visits were a nice way for the old man to keep in touch with his friends. But the occasion seemed different now, as the cowboy rose from the bed and read Yvo’s expressions as if they were an open book.

This was no social visit. His old Edenian friend was not there to enjoy the benefits of a second breakfast.

The doctor and the cowboy eyed each other speculatively: it had been quite some time since they had had reasons to worry. They questioned the barrister, but the man didn’t have much to offer: The Emperor requested their presence at the Palace. The statement, as simple as it was, still conveyed the complexity behind every decision made by the ruler of Outworld.

As Yvo waited outside their bedroom door, the couple got dressed and speculated, albeit briefly, about Kotal’s motives. If the emperor had decided not to inform Yvo about his reasons, if secrecy was, once more, the chosen method, then something big was about to knock on their doors. Their suspicions proved to be true the second they stepped out the House – dispersed in the street, Yvo counted almost a dozen Palace guards passing as regular citizens. But even if the trio understood that they had nowhere to run, they couldn’t still comprehend why they were supposed to run. Still, the gentle smiles from the common citizens, the Oppressed, as their king and queen marched by were enough to make the cowboy realize that they had done it: they had risen above their own miseries and shortcomings.

The Throne Room held no secrets for him. There was nothing left for Kotal to offer in the seemingly endless powerplay the Emperor was trying to force him to play. He had everything he could ever want: stability, love, friends; a simple life in the most complicated place.

“I need to warn you, son,” the barrister whispered in his ear as they approached the last door, “I have no idea what’s going on. He didn’t tell me – as far as I believe, he didn’t tell anyone.”

They had let a loose end slip through their fingers three years ago. Black was too busy worrying about the future and the Emperor was too busy, celebrating a victory that was both deafening and blinding. The debts of their past seemed far away now, like an echo in a nightmare you can’t quite recall in the morning. The barrister knocked on the door and stepped away almost immediately.

“You’re not coming with us?” the doctor asked, but the old man shook his head.

“I don’t think I’m allowed to,” he said. “Last night a prisoner entered the cell you used to live in, Erron. And ever since that moment, the Emperor hasn’t spoken to anyone.”

“Etienne?” the cowboy asked but the barrister had no time to speak. The great gate opened before their eyes and the Kahn appeared on the other side. His figure consumed their shadows one by one as the magnificence of blue towered over them.

“You can come too, Yvo,” Kotal said calmly, “we could all use a friend right now.”

“Alright, what’s going on?” the cowboy asked, impatient, but the Kahn walked back to the throne and signaled the trio to join him. “Who is this prisoner you captured, Kotal? Why do you need us now?”

“I didn’t capture anyone,” the emperor explained. “She knocked on our door last night; she said she was ready to turn herself in. And she spoke, Erron. She spoke about you and your wife – that’s why I need to see you. Both of you.”

“And who…”

“Someone from your past, Erron.” The Kahn interrupted him. “Someone you once knew, someone who trusted you and you betrayed her.”

The name formed on the cowboy’s lips, but he was unable to pronounce it. It had been so long; he had nearly forgotten about her.

“Tanya.”

“But… why?” an incredulous Black asked. “Why now? What can she possibly know about my wife?”

The emperor exhaled and rested his hands on his stomach. Then he looked down, pensively, as if afraid of the words he was about to say.

“Why now? Because somebody ordered her to turn herself in and speak,” Kotal said. “She still feels betrayed by you, Erron, and you are the main responsible for the Syndicate’s disappearance. Even if I led the army that took them down, even if I ordered their executions, everybody knows that you did all the work – and not just because you gave me Rosario’s journal. Everybody knows that you were the one who started this fight… that’s why they chose you as their leader.”

The Oppressed.

The voiceless ones. The victims.

“And if she’s here, that means that the Syndicate is ready to strike,” the emperor added. “The time for peace and love is already over: she’s here because they told her to come; she spoke because her wounded pride advised her to do so.”

“I didn’t know she was part of the Syndicate,” Black whispered as he took a step back.

“Who are you talking about?” the doctor asked. “Who is Tanya?”

“Tanya was loyal to Mileena,” the Emperor said, “and Mileena’s rule was a great match for the Syndicate… in a chaotic regime, they were able to complete and conduct their operations in broad daylight without the fear of getting caught.”

“You think this is some sort of uprising attempt?” Yvo asked. “Do you think they’ll try to overthrow you, my Emperor?”

Kotal shook his head.

“No, they were never interested in ruling the realm,” the Emperor said. “It’s true, things were easier for the Syndicate during Mileena’s brief rule, but they never cared for political power or the quest of conquering it – they are aware of their own limitations, they know they can’t embrace that kind of power. But even if during my time as Emperor things got a little more complex for the Syndicate, truth is that at the end of the day, they were still operational. And they will continue to be operational, no matter who sits on this throne,” Kotal reflected as his eyes got shrouded in the nostalgia of better days and easier battles. “The same thing happens inside the Syndicate: we erased the old order, but a single seed remained. Now that seed has given way to a new generation. No matter who leads the operation, they will still remain operational.”

“You think Etienne is the new leader?” Black questioned Kotal as he crossed his arms over his chest. “We can’t let them rise again, Kotal, we have to stop them now.”

The emperor took a deep breath and stared at the silent doctor. Then his eyes went back to Erron, and the anger that was written all over the cowboy’s face.

“She smiled at me,” Kotal confessed. “When she spoke to me last night and spilled all her secrets… she was smiling the whole time. And when I myself locked her up in that filthy cell she said she knew she had no reason to worry. _I won’t be here for long_ , she said to me.”

“She knows they’ll try to rescue her.” Yvo offered. “We need to plan a new strategy; we can’t let them get inside the Palace. That’s why you need Erron – you need him to fight by your side once again.”

But the Kahn shook his head. He stood up and walked up to the doctor.

“You didn’t die in the fire,” he said and Black’s heart stopped for a brief moment. “Tanya told me that the Rebel Seekers found your husband near the mountains, not in the Kuatan Jungle. She said Erron was injured, he was trying to reach a cabin in the mountains but they captured him and brought him back to the city. She doesn’t know what happened after that, but she stayed there, in the mountains, watching that cabin. And she watched everything. She saw the boy, she saw you, and she saw the fire.”

The doctor stepped back instinctively but the Emperor extended one of his arms and caressed her face with trembling fingers.

“You didn’t die in the fire.”

“Sighting,” the woman finally whispered. “You told Aalem that there was some sort of spirit in the mountains… but even if your story wasn’t true, he saw something. He saw _someone_.” She turned around and faced her husband. “He saw her, Erron. And she saw him.”

As the memories overtook the couple, the barrister understood the magnitude of the revelation.

“That guard was executed because he had murdered the woman in the cabin,” he said, “but the woman didn’t die. We murdered him for nothing. We executed him… if people find out about this…”

Kotal nodded his head.

“Last night I read your report again,” the Emperor said. “According to the official record, Pareedis killed the doctor and then Erron killed Pareedis. We murdered an innocent man seeking justice for his fallen brother. We gave them a martyr, maybe two martyrs.” The Khan covered his mouth with his hands and sat on the throne again, his eyes lost in thought. “What should I do now? If Tanya spoke to me, the Syndicate must know about this – they can tell everyone. People will know that we’ve been lying to them this entire time, even when I didn’t know. People will think that the Rebel Seekers were right, that Black should have been executed…”

“My Emperor…” Yvo pleaded.

“I am not going to execute him now, Yvo.” Kotal roared. “I can’t... I couldn't.”

The doctor’s voice broke the silence with unparalleled affection.

“I had lost all hope until the Rebel Seekers brought you in,” she whispered as her eyes met Black’s. “I had heard about you: an Earthrealmer working for the Emperor… He lost everything trying to help me, Kahn. He even killed me in his story to make sure no-one would look for me or hurt me – and he was in jail. He knew he could not protect me, so he made everything in his power for me not to need his protection at all. How can that be a bad thing?”

The Emperor stared at her with eyes full of love and understanding. He had felt that candor before, lifetimes ago, when days were warmer, and the battles were simpler. But the stampede shook their silent communion with an urgency that demanded action. The Syndicate was never going to knock on their doors, the Syndicate was going to break down all doors and walls, consuming everything in their path. Screams of terror and visions in red followed suit in the agora of despair. They were already there, running underneath their feet. Tanya was about to be freed and, with her freedom ensured, the first battle was already lost.

Erron reached for his peacemaker but the Emperor rose from the throne and stopped him.

“I did not request your presence today because I need you to fight,” he said. “I needed you to know that there are no more secrets between us; that the past is the past and that it is all forgiven.”

Erron tilted his head to the side, unsure.

“I’m sending you away now,” Kotal whispered. “Both of you. Yvo will now escort you to a portal and you will disappear, Erron.”

“No,” the cowboy fought. “This is our battle, Kotal.”

“No, it is not. Not anymore,” the Emperor sentenced. “I have prepared myself for this moment; we knew this time of peace and understanding could not last forever. I had three years to plan, three years to come up with a strategy, three years of training… but you? You had three years of drinks, and music, and love… you had three years of a simple life, the kind of life you wanted to live. Don’t sacrifice it, Erron. You don’t have to.”

“But you’re asking us to leave everything, everyone behind,” the doctor said. “That’s one hell of a sacrifice.”

“But you’ll be together,” Kotal offered. “This life you’ve created, you’ve created it around each other. If you could make it here, in this dreadful place, you can make it anywhere.” He stood up and faced Erron: “The truth that Tanya speaks will soon contaminate the minds of those who now admire you. And they will haunt you. They will hurt you. And you won’t dance anymore, you won’t sing anymore.”

As the screams got louder and the panic penetrated the Palace walls, Yvo grabbed Black by the shoulder and ushered him to move.

“I’ll escort you both to the portal, Erron. But we have to leave now; come on, you heard the Kahn, there’s no time to lose.”

The doctor stared at her husband and nodded her head in silence: The Emperor was right. They could sacrifice everything – but they could not sacrifice each other.

“We could use the old portal in the Library,” Yvo offered.

“No,” Kotal sentenced. “That portal registered suspicious activity some years ago; I’m afraid it’s no longer operational.”

Black looked at the barrister and nodded in silent appreciation: they had been the so-called suspicious activity but Yvo, once again, had helped them.

“I can’t allow you to use any of the official portals,” Kotal explained. “Those are monitored – if people find out the truth about what happened over a decade ago, they’ll search those portals for records. They’ll try to haunt you, Erron. We can’t give them the chance to find you.”

“How are we going to cross, then?” the doctor inquired.

“You’ll have to use _their_ portal,” Kotal said. “Luckily for you, the Syndicate seems to be quite busy over here, so there’s a high chance no-one is protecting that portal.”

“Where is it?” Black asked.

“In the jungle,” Kotal said. “In the Kuatan Jungle.”


	59. If I should Fall from Grace

Arc VII

Chapter 59

**If I Should Fall From Grace**

* * *

_“You have been the last dream of my soul.”_

Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities

* * *

The merciless sun of the afternoon was forging mirages in front of their eyes – golden and meandering restlessly across the green like tongues of fire and brimstone. Far away, in the distance, the sounds of violence resonated virulently in their ears: the citadel was under attack once again and their hearts suffered in their silent goodbye, imagining the cruel fate awaiting their loved ones back in the Wise House. Their lives, as they had known them, were officially over.

Their feet kept marching in the jungle for hours until it became nearly impossible to distinguish between shades of green. It all looked the same after a while – the richest tones and the lighter ones, all washed up in the humidity of the zone and the intensity of a nearly endless summer, could no longer pass for milestones in the path of desolation.

The Edenian barrister was the first to stop. His bones were aching; his exaggerated age had made it perfectly clear: this unexpected journey through the wild jungle was already taking its toll on him. Black’s legs came to a halt a few meters away from the old man and he retraced his last steps, helping the man down on the ground. The doctor joined them then, seeking refuge in the shadow of a tree – she reached out for her friend and nodded her head in silent comprehension.

“We shouldn’t be far from the portal now,” Yvo said, nearly breathless. “We should be there in less than two hours if I remember correctly.”

“It’s okay,” Alexandra let out softly as she closed her eyes for a minute: it was painfully hard not to get carried away by the alarming sounds coming from the capital. She still remembered the screams and the bombs, the pleas and the prayers. “Get some rest, Yvo. We’re safe now.”

Her timid optimism reminded Black of easy mornings and delightful evenings. Together, in the arms of the family they had procured for themselves.

“There’s one thing, dear,” the barrister began as he took her hand in his, “that has been in the back of my mind ever since we left the Palace. When you told the Emperor that you had lost all hope until the Rebel Seekers brought Erron,” the pause was both cruel and endearing but the barrister went on, “does that mean that you were one of them?”

Alex shook her head in silence and stared at her husband: it seemed pointless to keep the secret any longer now. Erron had tried his best to deduce her every enigma but this answer had never seen the light of day – she had kept it close to her heart; the last key of a personal intimacy she had bargained with for as long as she could remember. But Erron’s questions subsided once tranquility settled in and suddenly there was no need for interrogations.

The answer then fell asleep in her memories as her husband accepted her for who she was. He didn’t need to know who she had been before him.

That version of herself did not exist in the quiet type of life they had created.

“I was part of a team, a research team,” she said. “It was a small team, five or six members,” she paused, suddenly sad to realize that time had already worked its magic. The memories had vanished, but the pain had prevailed – fractured and disappointing, like a broken piece of glass in the most gorgeous window. “They sent us here to study the soil and the water; mineral components and pollution levels.”

“Who sent you?” Erron asked, stunned by the discovery, and his wife grimaced before taking a deep breath.

“The Special Forces,” she confessed, matter-of-factly. “Just like the Palace has a portion of its library entirely dedicated to Earthrealm; the Special Forces wanted to expand their knowledge on the realm, they wanted to create their own archive,” she smiled quietly to herself, reminiscing the innocence of those days. “Many papers and forms were signed; we could not tell a single soul where they were sending us… I was happy, in a way, because it all seemed like a great opportunity but when I came home, I realized I could not share that happiness. I had to be vague and give little to no detail of my upcoming expedition – and Nate listened, and felt happy for me, even when he didn’t have the slightest clue of what was truly going on.”

“But what happened?” Erron pressed on. “You were on your own when we first met – what happened to your team?”

A long and heartfelt silence took over her words and her husband squeezed her hand, expressing his tacit support.

“We were supposed to spend one week in this jungle,” Alex let out softly as she remembered her first time walking through the white lights of a portal. “But when we were about to leave, the Rebel-Seekers ambushed us near the portal… in retrospect, I don’t think the Special Forces were aware of the fact that the portal in the jungle sort of belongs to the Syndicate and their goons.” A timid, tender grin appeared on the corners of Yvo’s lips as the man listened to the doctor’s story. “We didn’t know who they were or what they wanted. Most members of my team fought them, and they were killed. A botanist named Harry helped me escape – we ran towards the city, but they found us, eventually.”

With his mouth agape, Black remembered.

“They tortured Harry for days until he cracked, and he paid with his sanity,” she whispered. “I had no choice but to become their healer – I didn’t want to end up like Harry and I certainly didn’t want to die like the rest of my colleagues. I was naïve to think that the Special Forces were searching for us – they had sent us here in complete secrecy, why would they care? It’s not like they could come over and search for us; that would have demanded all sorts of explanations and excuses,” she stared at Black for a moment, then she looked down again, “like I heard you say a million times, Erron, that’s just no good for politics.” She stood up and turned around, determined to resume her march, but Black stopped her.

“I could have protected you,” he said; his eyes were filled with an intrinsic sense of loss she knew too well to ignore.

She smiled fondly at him.

“You have.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Erron retorted childishly. “If you had told me this; if only I had known… I would have protected you.”

She smiled again and planted a soft kiss on his lips.

“You have.”

As the jungle stretched before their tired eyes, the trio kept on moving relentlessly towards that endless green. But the landscape had now mutated somehow, and both Black and the doctor were left with nothing but ghosts – was it ironic that the jungle that had been the beginning of their journey was now supposed to be their last stop before leaving Outworld? Black saw, dispersed around the green, the broken memories of his fight against Kano, the pain and the uncertainty; captivity and her, in the end. The doctor could recognize the places were her colleagues had died, the exact spot where her first aid kid became a joke.

And there, enveloped in green, the lights of the portal glimmered in their eyes.

But salvation seemed bitter. They had built a new life and now they were forced to abandon it and start over. In the end, it was too high a price.

As the doctor grabbed his hand, the cowboy understood that it was time to let go of the past once again. He stared into her eyes and nodded his head in silence, offering her the chance to be the first to cross. The woman looked over her shoulder and smiled at Yvo, who smiled back at her, knowing in his heart how much they all despised goodbyes. She put her arms around the old man and squeezed his old bones into a tight hug – but no words were spoken. The gratitude of her silence was saying more than enough.

She took a deep breath and readied herself. Her legs, resolute, approached the portal but her eyes were shrouded in doubt. It took her a moment to understand that the figure she was seeing was not a figment of her imagination – that he was there, and that he was real.

He was standing there, behind the portal. How he had gotten there or why, she couldn’t understand.

“Nate?”

She wasn’t a ghost. She wasn’t a mirage or a trick of his mind. She was real, and very much alive, and the encounter became monumental for him, transcendental for the resolution of his entire existence.

Stepping away from the portal, the doctor walked towards her former boyfriend as Black watched, petrified. She traced the outline of his face, of that face she used to know so well, as her eyes absorbed the differences between the boy she had loved and this new man before her.

“You wanted to save the world,” she whispered, brokenhearted, “but you make poison now.”

Nathan lowered his head, but Kano didn’t give him any time to explain his reasons. As the Australian mercenary appeared, Nate understood that he had been used as bait.

“All portals are being registered,” Kano said, “if you wanted to escape, you needed to get to this portal… and I knew, the moment she saw you, boy, she would hesitate or at least take her sweet time – with you here, she wouldn’t cross immediately. I’m sorry for interrupting this reunion, it was long overdue if you ask me, but I couldn’t help a little poetry,” he laughed as Black reached for his peacemaker. “They say life is a circle, right? Then it’s only natural for things to end in the exact spot where they once started.”

He was hurt, broken and bleeding on the ground. Kano had nearly killed him. He could still remember that day – could see the blood traveling down his own skin, could feel the pain and the heat.

“You should have killed me that day, Kano,” Erron spat disdainfully. “You won’t be getting a second chance.”

As Yvo indicated the doctor and Nathan to run for cover, Kano put his hands on both sides of his waist and walked towards Erron.

“I didn’t want to kill you that day, Black,” he said. “Don’t think too highly of yourself.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because you reminded me of him,” Kano smiled and looked over his shoulder only to find Nathan hiding cowardly behind a rock. “The resemblance is truly uncanny, don’t cha think?”

_If you could only picture this as a garden, boy… a beautiful meadow in bloom that quickly becomes a muddy, broken valley._

_Your eyes gave you away._

“So, you married your grand, grand, grand, grand, grand son’s girlfriend? How twisted is that, fella?”

The doctor stood up and abandoned her hiding place – she had seen the resemblance, had marveled on the similarities. But could this be possible? Could Black and Nathan be united by blood? The cowboy, taken aback by the revelation, dropped his gun and looked at that other man, that other version of himself – equally corrupted; now irreversibly linked to his own name.

_She once said to me that there’s no such thing as inherited evil but now that I can finally look at you and see you as you are, I have to admit that she was scandalously wrong. I still am my father’s son; I am the flesh of his flesh and the sin of his sins. Just as you are the flesh of my flesh, and the sin of my sins._

“The only reason why I didn’t kill you that day, is because I had already met him,” Kano went on. “I knew his face reminded me of someone I knew, but I couldn’t quite place it… until our fight. When I saw you again, I realized the two of you were connected somehow. So, I investigated Nate’s genealogy until I hit a dead-end. “

_She once told me there's no such thing as inherited evil, can you believe this woman, kid? So thoughtful, so loving, always taking care of others… how can she love us? Do you ever stop and wonder, boy, 'cause I sure do every night… when I go to bed with her I just look at her while she sleeps right next to me and I know I don't deserve her. And still, she loves me._

“And when I couldn’t go on, I started again – with you.” He moved closer to the gunman and smiled broadly at him. “I remembered some of the things you told us during your time in the Black Dragon, so I traveled to rural Texas and guess what?” Kano questioned Erron with an impeccable sense of irony. “I hit yet another dead-end.”

“Bullshit” Black roared, furious to discover that his story had been unveiled by someone as despicable as Kano.

“Years passed, but I never forgot this connection between the two of you,” Kano added. “But then you and the girl took a trip down memory lane but, as usual, I was always one step ahead of you: the last page of the journal you stole back in Earthrealm says you and your girlfriend had a child, but there were no more pages, right? Wrong. There was a final page.”

Black closed his eyes and his world faded to black. His blood, contaminated by the ashes of a time long gone, was burning in his veins.

“When Harriet was adopted, they changed her name to Margaret Henderson,” Kano revealed, looking into Nathan’s horrified eyes: “That’s your grand, grand, grand, grand, grandmother, right?”

_You and I both know; we are the sons of crime. We are dark men, Nathan. Did you feel it back then, when you were but a little boy? Inside of you, growing and taking hold of you like a parasite choosing its final host. Something dark, something dense… Like a silent sin that grows deep within you that you know, at some point, is gonna scratch until it reaches the surface._

With menacing steps, Kano approached the doctor:

“You see, dear, they are more than ghosts,” he said as he pointed at both Black and Nathan. “They share an essence that goes far beyond any physical resemblance: their blood was cursed centuries ago, maybe that’s why someone that wanted to make the world a better place for everyone ended up fabricating poison.”

“This is too much, Kano,” Black yelled, “too much for an old debt, too poetic for a brainless goon like you.”

Kano laughed, the sound of his amusement ricocheting through the green around them.

“But it’s not my life, Black – it’s yours,” he offered, “that’s what makes it fun.” Fingers on his knives, the crimson beam of his artificial eye was clamoring for blood. “I spent over a decade puppeteering the invisible strings of both your lives and you never noticed; you were too busy thinking about political plots and military strategies.”

Kano launched himself at Black and the gunslinger dodged his attacker, retrieving his peacemaker. As the battle took form before his eyes, Yvo reached for the doctor and ushered her to cross the portal but she refused: Nathan was still there, standing motionless before them, unable to go on. It was understandable, she thought, for Nate not to be able to comprehend the existence of someone like Black, a being that had been transversal to his own generations, fooling time and space over and over again.

“That’s why you wanted all that money,” Nate whispered, “American dollars are worth shit this side of the portal, but back home… you wanted a ticket out of here, my family’s money is your life insurance.” He walked towards Kano, no longer threatened by him. “You ruined my life, you ruined her life – you had fun manipulating our story just because you could!” He threw himself at Kano but the doctor stopped him, using her body as a shield. And the knife found her, certain and merciless. Erron had hurt Kano, but Kano had hurt both meridians of the same bloodline with a single movement.

The end and the beginning were enduring the same pain, the end and the beginning had lost their in-between.

Her last breath had been stolen. Every possible future had been erased.

With an animalistic roar, Black attacked Nathan, understanding in his mind that his impulsiveness had been the reason why the doctor had been hurt. But he was lying to himself. Kano ran away, hurt and covered in his own blood, but Black didn’t care. He got on his knees and cried like a helpless child. He could kill Nathan, erase his own seed from every possible world but still, it wouldn’t be enough.

_You and me, we are vermin, we are mud from the same broken valley._

He could kill Nathan. Could erase his own seed from all worlds.

But she would never forgive him.

Nathan got on his knees, right beside his ancestor. He had searched for her, had dirtied his hands in the dirt of his own shortcomings and he had found her.

Time had never been on their side.

His ancestor looked back at him, the crescendo of questions becoming visible inside his reddened eyes: what is time for a man who cannot age? Her existence was a fragment, a small dot in an exaggerated straight line – but it was already over.

He cannot experience time but right now time has stopped. The pause is unbearably long. It’s over. In the blink of an eye, all that magnitude, all that unmeasurable substance doesn’t mean a thing.

It is over.

It is irreversibly over.

Already over.

Just like that.

Gone.

 _Your eyes gave you away_.

As Yvo cried for the inevitable, both past and present stared at each other: Alex had chosen to protect Nathan but she would have done the same for Black. Are they the same man? Like Alex and Amanda, or Zar and Annie – it is the same face, the same blood, the same love, unaltered and evergreen?

There was a tomb with her name on Earthrealm, but her body now rested someplace else. From that cold tomb to this green mausoleum, did she really exist between her deaths? Her death is the mother of all deaths: Amanda’s death, his mother’s death, Annie’s death, Zar’s death – but the list goes on and the names look like milestones in the path of pain and dissolution.

They buried her body under the silent trees as the Oppressed resisted in the frontlines of yet another battle.

But, without her, their personal wars were already lost.


	60. Epilogue: A Cowboy's Guide to the Galaxy

Epilogue

Chapter 60

**A Cowboy's Guide to the Galaxy**

* * *

_“But, when I was a young man, I did not want to be a hero. And, when I lived in that bewildering city, in the early days of the war, life itself had become nothing but a complex labyrinth and everything that could possibly exist, did so. And so much complexity - a complexity so rich it can hardly be expressed in language - all that complexity... it bored me. In those tumultuous and kinetic times, the time of actualized desire, I myself had only the one desire. And that was, for everything to stop.”_

Angela Carter - The infernal desire machines of Doctor Hoffman

* * *

“Go back to your family, boy,” Erron whispered as he noticed Nathan standing still before the dancing lights of the portal. His ancestor was right – there was nothing else for him to do there. His wife and his children were waiting for him back home. Still, she was gone. The love of his life had died protecting him and closure felt distant and elusive.

The younger man turned around and faced his ancestor. He shook his head.

“How come you exist?” He asked. “How come you’re still alive?”

It was impossible. Improbable. Implausible.

History and futurity had finally merged.

“I met a sorcerer when I was twenty-five,” Erron said. “I know it sounds crazy; I didn’t believe him either. The man worked his magic on me, but I thought he was bluffing – many of the things he said were pretty obvious: there had been a war, I was an outlaw, a gun for hire... but then he spoke of my father; he said he was still alive and not even my mother knew his name or who he was; she was raped. He said: I’ll come to you when you’re fifty years old, twice your age now, but you won’t have aged a single day.” He paused for a moment; it was difficult to bring back the memories. “He saw my box of memories and grabbed it, and green smoke shrouded the box and I felt weird. He said that, for as long as those memories endure, so will I. Then he took off and I paid no mind. At least, I tried to. Years passed and then I noticed that I wasn't aging properly - I wasn't aging at all.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and Nathan did the same, but the younger man wasn’t even looking at him – his eyes were lost in the portal.

“What he had said about my father remained in the back of my mind for quite some time and one day, I went,” Black confessed. “He owned a farm in El Paso.”

_Your eyes gave you away._

“He looked just like me, the bastard was my biological father. As I was leaving, I heard a young girl was calling him grandpa. That meant that I had been alone all my life but he had a family. He had ruined my mother’s life, but he was loved,” He stared at Nathan for a long time, drawing the invisible parallels that history had tried to erase. “Then she asked me who I was, but I couldn’t talk.” He looked down. “I came back that night and killed that son of a bitch,” only then, Nathan faced him.

“I’m sorry for the depressing origins story,” Black mumbled awkwardly, “but I guess now it’s your story too, somehow.”

“Why would this man stop your aging process?” Nathan managed to ask, composing himself – but Black shrugged his shoulders.

“He wanted something in return,” he said. “Everybody does.”

“Did she love you? Was she happy?”

Black nodded his head in silence and Nathan bit his lower lip and nodded his head as well. As the sound of yet another bomb falling on the citadel interrupted the scene, Nathan walked towards the portal and disappeared in the dancing lights.

Yvo was still there, holding Black’s box of memories in his hands.

“As long as these memories endure, so will you,” the old man said, and Black smiled timidly. “What now, Erron?”

“She once asked me,” he remembered, “if, given the chance, I would give up this eternal youth. If by some miracle, or the hand of an Elder God I could age again, if I would take that chance.”

“Boy, you know, what you two had… It could not last forever.”

Black nodded his head.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t supposed to end like this, not now… I need time, Yvo, she was taken from me, I’m angered,” he whispered. “We all killed her – even us, the ones who loved her most.”

As he crossed the portal, Erron Black disappeared. Walking towards the dancing lights, the multiplicity of lives he had lived merged into one white prism – Josephine’s son, Zar’s husband, Jessica’s lover, Amanda’s boyfriend, Alexandra’s husband. And Nathan’s ancestor.

Yvo stared at the smoke columns far away, in the distance. He hid the cowboy’s box of memories underneath his tunic, determined to protect those memories just like Zar, Ferra and the doctor had protected them.

Now it was his turn to keep him and his story alive.

For as long as those memories endure, so will him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s final notes:
> 
> As I sit down and begin this final author's note, I realize just how hard it is to let go of the stories you created for yourself. Because that's what we do when we write; we communicate with ourselves, creating stories and narratives that we need to exorcise from our system. Readers are wonderful, they are an essential compass and the greatest company ever (especially when you write fanfiction and they read as you update your story) but writing is an act of solitude and, if you are like me, you appreciate this kind of loneliness. It's a nice, quiet silence. It's introspective. It's you.
> 
> I'm shaken. I spent four years writing this story, I never thought I could commit myself like this for as long as I did. This feels like a victory and a very personal one. There were times when my interests migrated someplace else, other projects that got in the way, life... I started writing this story as a single woman and now I'm married, I've moved houses in between, the dog we had back when I first started drafting the initial chapters has been dead for two years now...
> 
> There were times when I said to myself: "Ok, I don't feel like writing, I don't feel like continuing this story, my motivation's gone." I put it on hold, I fell into a long hiatus but I never had the guts to delete the story. It crossed my mind, I'm not gonna lie, but I lacked the courage. I knew, deep down, that I was gonna finish this eventually. I just had to be wise and wait - I love this story, I worked really hard; it wasn't fair for me to feel like this was some sort of obligation.
> 
> I wanted to end this story because the story deserved an ending. I didn't want to end the story so I could cross it off my to-do list. So I went back and revisited the whole thing - it had been so long, I needed to connect myself to the core of the plot, I needed to feel again that irrevocable sense of empathy that connects you with your own words. A new game had just been released, there were things that I needed to change, there were others that I needed to consider. 
> 
> I finished all my other projects, this was the last piece of fanfiction that I needed to complete - and then what? I often wondered if my impossibility to bring this story to an end had anything to do with the fact that Debris was always meant to be my last piece of fanfiction. "Original fiction is what I'll do next!" I'd say but it's scary out there. What if I'm not good enough? What if nobody likes my stories? What if I never make it as an author? I was terrified, so I shielded myself in this hiatus. "First finish Debris, then go knock on doors!" Well, I have finished Debris now and I'm still terrified but at least those questions don't mean much to me now: your reviews were amazing, you liked my story, and I have finished this 60-chapters-long monster.
> 
> I'm proud of myself, I'm satisfied.
> 
> And you've been a huge part of it - thanks to every reader, reviewer, friend, consultant, editor who has helped me along the way. Thanks to those who, anonymously, have waited for a new update, thanks to those who left a review, or favorited the story, thanks to all those who wrote to me directly or chatted with me about the story. I was always fascinated to read your theories and your opinions!
> 
> The end of the story had already been planned by the time I posted the first chapter. And while many times I debated with myself about these final chapters, I decided to stick with the original plan. I never felt pressured to write exactly what my readers wanted from the story, and that was wonderful. So thanks for letting me write the story that I needed to tell.
> 
> It's been a long ride, guys, but I'm really, really happy.
> 
> I'm sorry if this final note feels like a bunch of stuff that has no logical order or correlation, I guess I just let my emotions get the best of me.
> 
> And now, as I sit down and finish this final author's note I have to admit: I'm gonna miss this story. It's gonna be weird, from this point on, not to get carried away by new ideas and plot twists for Black and the doctor. It's gonna be weird that, after four years, I won't be writing this story anymore. Or revisiting it. Or working on it.
> 
> But that's life, right?
> 
> Thanks for everything.  
> See you around.


End file.
